Local Source Tsunami Inundation Modelling for Poverty Bay, Gisborne

After the Boxing Day 2004 Sumatran Tsunami, a review of tsunami hazard and risk for New Zealand identified Gisborne as the urban area with the greatest risk. Gisborne could experience gt;500 fatalities and extensive damage to infrastructure during a severe tsunami. The severity of a tsunami is likely to be low for distance sources given the effectiveness of the Pacific Tsunami Warning System. However, there is a substantial risk from local sources, as no local warning system of any kind exists. Prompt evacuation is probably the most cost-effective tsunami mitigation strategy available for New Zealand coastal locations, including Gisborne. This requires both knowledge of the extent of tsunami inundation, and sufficient warning of the tsunami arrival. Hence, there are two main objectives for this investigation: 1. Determine the likely extent of tsunami inundation for Gisborne City and surrounding populated coastal locations in Poverty Bay, using a combination of hydrodynamic tsunami modelling and GIS. The modelling will simulate historical events, particularly the largest historical tsunami, the May 1947 local tsunami. Modelling will consider potential events based on the Maximum Credible Earthquake for local sources associated with the Hikurangi Deformation Front. 2. Create inundation maps of Poverty Bay that can be used for future town planning and emergency plans

Emergency Training, Education and Perceived Clinical Skills for Tsunami Care Among Nurses in Banda Aceh, Indonesia

Background: Nurses are a part of health care provider who has responsibility to respond to disaster. The nurses ought to have sufficient knowledge and skills in caring for patients in disasters such as in a tsunami. Clinical skills of nurses effectively help the nurses in handling the tsunami emergency response.Objectives: To describe the levels of perceived clinical skills for tsunami care in acute response phase (6 months) after tsunami struck, and to examine the relationship between emergency training, education, and perceived clinical skills for tsunami care in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.Methods: This was a correlational study. Systematic random sampling was employed to recruit 97 nurses in a hospital in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Data were collected using questionnaires developed by the researchers and colleagues. The questionnaires consisted of two main parts: The Demographic Data Questionnaire (DDQ) and The Tsunami Care Questionnaire (TCQ).Results: Overall, perceived clinical skills for tsunami care were at a moderate level with the total mean score of 3.52 (SD = 0.86). Pearson product moment correlation coefficients indicated significant relationships between perceived clinical skills for tsunami care and attending emergency training and education (r = .23, p< .05).Conclusion: The nurses in the hospital should maintain and improve their knowledge and skills by regularly attending emergency training and education in order to respond to disaster more effectively

Tsunami preparedness communication : understanding the business audience : a research report completed in partial fulfilment of the Master of Communication degree at Massey University, Wellington

Previous research conducted by GNS Science pre and post the 2016 Kaikōura Quake identified that the New Zealand public does not sufficiently understand the risks posed by tsunami hazards, and in particular there is limited awareness about the different responses required for local, regional, and distant-source tsunami events. This research was undertaken to delve deeper and generate new insights into the reasons behind that finding, specifically for one key audience: business leaders. This audience was primarily chosen because businesses play a key interdependent role in disaster response and community recovery. An audience-centred communication approach was chosen over the traditional mass communication approach most often applied in emergency management practice to date. A qualitative approach was selected because of its ability to provide complementary data to existing quantitative studies. Data were collected from twelve business-focussed community leaders, and business owners/senior managers in coastal Tauranga (Pāpāmoa) and Wellington (Rongotai), through a series of semi-structured interview conversations and email questionnaires. The data gathering instruments were designed to better understand the participants’: (1) tsunami knowledge and awareness; (2) tsunami risk perception; (3) existing tsunami preparedness; and (4) behavioural intent for future tsunami preparedness initiatives. Field observations and engagement with emergency management professionals provided greater depth of understanding and enhanced the contextual aspects of the research. The overall findings and themes emerging from this research suggest that: ● As indicated in the wider survey, there is a lack of tsunami awareness and preparedness among the business audience More specifically in the audience-centred context: ● There is confusion surrounding the roles and responsibilities of official emergency management organisations ● There is a need for improved organisational Health & Safety understanding and compliance concerning natural hazards in the business community ● Different stakeholders, even within the business audience, have different tsunami preparedness wants and needs The research also identified that: ● Some business leaders are willing to act as conduits for tsunami preparedness in their organisations and communities; viewing it as part of their identity and responsibility as a business leader. Specific suggestions for improved tsunami preparedness communication include: ● Ongoing stakeholder engagement and tsunami education with proactive ‘opinion leaders’ in the business community ● Adopting further targeted audience-centred approaches to improve the spread of preparedness messages through society ● A revision of existing official tsunami preparedness material and tsunami mapping to better meet the needs of end users, such as with customised co-developed material for business community needs in different regions ● Enhancing preparedness communication through the researcher’s ‘Five C’s Model

Operational tsunami modelling with TsunAWI – recent developments and applications

In this article, the tsunami model TsunAWI (Alfred Wegener Institute) and its application for hindcasts, inundation studies, and the operation of the tsunami scenario repository for the Indonesian tsunami early warning system are presented. TsunAWI was developed in the framework of the German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) and simulates all stages of a tsunami from the origin and the propagation in the ocean to the arrival at the coast and the inundation on land. It solves the non-linear shallow water equations on an unstructured finite element grid that allows to change the resolution seamlessly between a coarse grid in the deep ocean and a fine representation of coastal structures. During the GITEWS project and the following maintenance phase, TsunAWI and a framework of pre- and postprocessing routines was developed step by step to provide fast computation of enhanced model physics and to deliver high quality results

“We Didn’t Choose to Live in a Transition Society:” The Youth of Milošević’s Serbia Ten Years Later

The 1990’s were an extremely dark time in modern Serbian history, mired by wars, sanctions, dictatorship, and struggle. Those who came of age in that time find their entire lives to be defined by their country’s transition process. Because of this experience, these individuals are in a unique position to make connections between past conflicts and present challenges in Serbia. In particular, through understanding their narratives of this recent past and their perceptions of Serbia’s current progress in its transition phase, one can glean a better picture of this generation and what it holds for Serbia’s future. In allowing these narratives to surface, an alternative understanding of both the past and present can be created and embraced

How could a natural catastrophe impact the ecology of a species? The Nicobar megapode and tsunami

This study on the impact of the 2004 tsunami on the Nicobar megapode Megapodius nicobariensis, endemic coastal living bird species in the Nicobar group of islands showed a significant decline (nearly 70%) in the number of individuals when compared to before tsunami populations (Paired sample test, t=2.061, df=14, p&#x3c;0.05). The tsunami has also adversely influenced the nest-site selection of the megapodes. The post tsunami impact on this species is also expected to be severe, pushing the species into the category of &#x22;critically endangered&#x22;

Modeling near-field tsunami observations to improve finite-fault slip models for the 11 March 2011 Tohoku earthquake

The massive tsunami generated by the 11 March 2011 Tohoku earthquake (M_w 9.0) was widely recorded by GPS buoys, wave gauges, and ocean bottom pressure sensors around the source. Numerous inversions for finite-fault slip time histories have been performed using seismic and/or geodetic observations, yielding generally consistent patterns of large co-seismic slip offshore near the hypocenter and/or up-dip near the trench, where estimated peak slip is ~60 m. Modeling the tsunami generation and near-field wave processes using two detailed rupture models obtained from either teleseismic P waves or high-rate GPS recordings in Japan allows evaluation of how well the finite-fault models account for the regional tsunami data. By determining sensitivity of the tsunami calculations to rupture model features, we determine model modifications that improve the fit to the diverse tsunami data while retaining the fit to the seismic and geodetic observations