HR: 10:05h
AN: NS21A-08    [Abstracts]
TI: U.S. states and territories national tsunami hazard assessment, historic record and sources for waves
AU: * Dunbar, P K
EM: paula.dunbar@noaa.gov
AF: National Geophysical Data Center, NOAA E/GC1 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305, United States
AU: Weaver, C
EM: craig@ess.washington.edu
AF: U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Program Dept of Earth & Space Science Univ of Washington, Box 351310, Seattle, WA 98195, United States
AB: In 2005, the U.S. National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) released a joint report by the sub-committee on Disaster Reduction and the U.S. Group on Earth Observations titled Tsunami Risk Reduction for the United States: A Framework for Action (Framework). The Framework outlines the President's&pstrategy for reducing the United States tsunami risk. The first specific action called for in the Framework is to "Develop standardized and coordinated tsunami hazard and risk assessments for all coastal regions of the United States and its territories." Since NOAA is the lead agency for providing tsunami forecasts and warnings and NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) catalogs information on global historic tsunamis, NOAA/NGDC was asked to take the lead in conducting the first national tsunami hazard assessment. Earthquakes or earthquake-generated landslides caused more than 85% of the tsunamis in the NGDC tsunami database. Since the United States Geological Survey (USGS) conducts research on earthquake hazards facing all of the United States and its territories, NGDC and USGS partnered together to conduct the first tsunami hazard assessment for the United States and its territories. A complete tsunami hazard and risk assessment consists of a hazard assessment, exposure and vulnerability assessment of buildings and people, and loss assessment. This report is an interim step towards a tsunami risk assessment. The goal of this report is provide a qualitative assessment of the United States tsunami hazard at the national level. Two different methods are used to assess the U.S. tsunami hazard. The first method involves a careful examination of the NGDC historical tsunami database. This resulted in a qualitative national tsunami hazard assessment based on the distribution of runup heights and the frequency of runups. Although tsunami deaths are a measure of risk rather than hazard, the known tsunami deaths found in the NGDC database search were compared with the qualitative assessments based on frequency and amplitude. The second method to assess tsunami hazard involved using the USGS earthquake databases to search for possible earthquake sources near American coastlines to extend the NOAA/NGDC tsunami databases backward in time. The qualitative tsunami hazard assessment based on the results of the NGDC and USGS database searches will be presented.
DE: 0468 Natural hazards
DE: 4564 Tsunamis and storm surges
DE: 7200 SEISMOLOGY
SC: Near-Surface Geophysics [NS]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting