Tsunamis in the Euro-Mediterranean region: emergency and long term countermeasures

Tsunamis are known to occur in the southern European seas where all the types of sources (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and landslides from the continental margins) are active. Historical records give information even of catastrophic events that were able to affect close and remote coasts and to cause extensive and severe destruction. In spite of this, awareness of the threat posed by tsunamis was only matter of specialists until the Indian Ocean 2004 disastrous tsunami. This was a shock for the public opinion even in Europe. The immediate effect was, among others, the planning of a number of regional and of national Tsunami Warning Systems (TWS), the implementation of which was to be coordinated by the UNESCO/IOC (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission) through the intergovernmental group called ICG/NEAMTWS. This paper analyses the efforts made by the international community to create the TWSs in the region, and the reasons why their implementation resulted to be a slow process that nowadays is still incomplete: five years after the establishment of the ICG/NEAMTWS, only a few national TWSs are in operations, a few regional TWSs are in a pre-operational phase. In addition to the efforts for building TWSs, which covers the field of the immediate response to the crisis, also countermeasures in the long term have to be developed and planned. In this category one can include all studies of tsunami hazard, tsunami vulnerability and tsunami risk, and the related plans for tsunami risk mapping, for evacuation, and for sustainability of coastal area development. Methods have been defined by recent research, but unfortunately they have not been given adequate attention by local authorities and have not been incorporated in any practical actions for defence from marine hazard of any coastal communities of southern Europe, not even in the one that happened to be the most exposed to tsunami attacks. Therefore today southern Europe is unprotected from tsunamis as it was in the 20th century, but it is much more vulnerable since the occupation of the coastal belt grew enormously in the meantime