Search

Tsunamis constitute a significant hazard for European coastal populations, and the impact of tsunami events worldwide can extend well beyond the coastal regions directly affected. Understanding the complex mechanisms of tsunami generation, propagation, and inundation, as well as managing the tsunami risk, requires multidisciplinary research and infrastructures that cross national boundaries. Recent decades have seen both great advances in tsunami science and consolidation of the European tsunami research community. A recurring theme has been the need for a sustainable platform for coordinated tsunami community activities and a hub for tsunami services. Following about three years of preparation, in July 2021, the European tsunami community attained the status of Candidate Thematic Core Service (cTCS) within the European Plate Observing System (EPOS) Research Infrastructure. Within a transition period of three years, the Tsunami candidate TCS is anticipated to develop into a fully operational EPOS TCS. We here outline the path taken to reach this point, and the envisaged form of the future EPOS TCS Tsunami. Our cTCS is planned to be organised within four thematic pillars: (1) Support to Tsunami Service Providers, (2) Tsunami Data, (3) Numerical Models, and (4) Hazard and Risk Products. We outline how identified needs in tsunami science and tsunami risk mitigation will be addressed within this structure and how participation within EPOS will become an integration point for community development.

Tsunamis are long waves and commonly modeled with the shallow-water wave approximation of the equations of motion. The calculation of tsunami inundation remains after two decades of progress a vexing and temperamental computation exquisitely dependent on ad-hoc algorithms. We present computed results using, a splitting method in space to reduce this hyperbolic system in two successive hyperbolic systems, one for each primitive variable. Then, we use dispersive, Godunov type finite difference method and solve the equations in characteristic form. We use the methodology implemented in the code MOST to calculate inundation from four different earthquake scenarios for Heraklion, Greece. MOST has been repeatedly benchmarked. The scenarios are geophysical estimates of the source mechanisms of the 365 AD event, the largest known earthquake in the Eastern Mediterranean in the last two millenia. The earthquake scenarios used allow for defining the seafloor deformation resulting from the parent seismic motions and, after translating them to the water surface, they constitute the initial conditions for computations. We use high resolution bathymetric and topographic data to generate fine resolution grids used in the computations. Our practice allows for a precise identification of the onland inundation and the overland flow depths and currents during tsunami flooding in Heraklion. This is the first time such a quantitative study has been undertaken for Eastern Crete. We conclude that there is substantial hazard, and there is little difference among the four different seismic interpretations of the 365 AD earthquake.© 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of IMACS.

International audience; In this work we present a numerical study of the long wave conditions induced in the old Venetian Harbor of Chania (in the island of Crete, Greece) using two models. The fully nonlinear-weakly dispersive COULWAVE code and the weakly nonlinear-weakly dispersive TUCWave code. The two models are used to determine the resonant frequencies, amplitudes and modes of the entire harbor basin. The presented results are compared and discussed