HR: 1340h
AN: S53A-1020    [Abstracts]
TI: A European effort towards the development of tools for tsunami hazard and risk assessment and mitigation, and tsunami early warning: the EC-funded TRANSFER project
AU: Tinti, S
EM: stefano.tinti@unibo.it
AF: University of Bologna, Department of Physics, Sector of Geophysics, Viale Carlo Berti Pichat, 8, Bologna, 40127, Italy
AU: * Armigliato, A
EM: alberto.armigliato@unibo.it
AF: University of Bologna, Department of Physics, Sector of Geophysics, Viale Carlo Berti Pichat, 8, Bologna, 40127, Italy
AB: TRANSFER (acronym for "Tsunami Risk ANd Strategies For the European Region") is a European Community funded project being coordinated by the University of Bologna (Italy) and involving 29 partners in Europe, Turkey and Israel. The main objectives of the project can be summarised as: 1) improving our understanding of tsunami processes in the Euro-Mediterranean region, 2) contributing to the tsunami hazard, vulnerability and risk assessment, 3) identifying the best strategies for reduction of tsunami risk, 4) focussing on the gaps and needs for the implementation of an efficient tsunami early warning system (TEWS) in the Euro-Mediterranean area, which is a high-priority task in consideration that no tsunami early warning system is today in place in the Euro- Mediterranean countries. This paper briefly outlines the results that were obtained in the first year of life of the project and the activities that are currently carried out and planned for the future. In particular, we will emphasize the efforts made so far in the following directions. 1) The improvement of existing numerical models for tsunami generation, propagation and impact, and the possible development of new ones. Existing numerical models have been already applied to selected benchmark problems. At the same time, the project is making an important effort in the development of standards for inundation maps in Europe. 2) The project Consortium has selected seven test areas in different countries facing the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern Atlantic Ocean, where innovative probabilistic and statistical approaches for tsunami hazard assessment, up-to-date and new methods to compute inundation maps are being and will be applied. For the same test areas, tsunami scenario approaches are being developed, vulnerability and risk assessed, prevention and mitigation measures defined also by the advice of end users that are organised in an End User Group. 3) A final key aspect is represented by the dissemination of the project data and results to the largest possible public. The two privileged means are and will be the project web site (http://www.transferproject.eu) and a web-based GIS database integrating existing data and new project data, ranging from tsunami catalogues to inventories of seismic and non-seismic sources, from topographies and bathymetries at different scales and resolutions to layers containing tsunami inundation maps. Hopefully, this paper will stimulate a discussion and an exchange of experiences with tsunami scientists from different regions of the world.
DE: 0468 Natural hazards
DE: 3094 Instruments and techniques
DE: 4564 Tsunamis and storm surges
DE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty
SC: Seismology [S]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting