1990 saw the start of a major international research initiative aimed at the development of a better understanding of how active volcanoes behave and of the threat that some pose to life and property, with a view to reducing the effects of volcanic disasters in the 1990s. The initiative forms part of a multidisciplinary approach devoted to reducing natural disasters of all kinds in the last decade of the millenium, designated by the United Nations as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR). Critical to the success of the initiative is the development and utilization of better volcanic surveillance programmes. These will be partly based on the use of established techniques such as seismic and ground‐deformation monitoring, but will increasingly incorporate more innovative methods such as satellite remote sensing and the measurement of microgravity and micromagnetic change
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