Colombia: Listening to the volcano - Nasa communities blend ancestral knowledge with contemporary seismology in Colombia

Can scientific and indigenous knowledge work together? The synergistic partnership between the Nasa people's indigenous knowledge and the Universidad del Valle’s Seismological Observatory scientific data prove that they can in an article by Joseph Hincks for National Geographic.

According to the article, when the Universidad del Valle’s Seismological Observatory of the Southwest detected activity at the Nevado del Huila Volcano in February 2007, Colombian Making Cities Resilient Promoter Henry Peralta and his colleagues were commissioned to install an early warning system for eruptions. In order to incorporate the Nasa’s intimate knowledge of their land with data from the observatory, Peralta devised a strategy for disaster risk reduction using the acronym ROSA, which stood for Recuerdo (memory), Observacion (observation), Sueño (dream) and Algoritmo (algorithms).

'It is not just about reducing risk and it is not just about natural disasters, its also about investment in the social, political, and economic issues and the life quality of the population,' said Peralta as he shared his experiences on the Peace Boat,