Xynthia, February 2010 : Autopsy of a Forseable Catastrophe

International audienceIn this paper, an analysis of the recurrence of the storms and their damage intensity for each case study site is presented. The work analysed historical large-scale events occurred from The Middle Ages to the 1960s at case study sites in the North Norfolk Coast (UK), the Charente-Maritime and Vendée coast (France), the Cinque Terre-Liguria (Italy), the Emilia-Romagna coast (Italy), and the Ria Formosa coast (Portugal). The work presented here used a database of events built by the RISC-KIT project, examining records for the last 300 years, including the characteristics of the storms as well as recorded losses. It is believed that historical records can provide an important testbed for the statistical significance of return period of events