The Tsunami Assessment Modelling System by the Joint Research Centre

The Tsunami Assessment Modeling System was developed by the European Commission, Joint Research Centre, in order to serve Tsunami early warning systems such as the Global Disaster Alerts and Coordination System (GDACS) in the evaluation of possible consequences by a Tsunami of seismic nature. The Tsunami Assessment Modeling System is currently operational and is calculating in real time all the events occurring in the world, calculating the expected Tsunami wave height and identifying the locations where the wave height should be too high. The first part of the paper describes the structure of the system, the underlying analytical models and the informatics arrangement; the second part shows the activation of the system and the results of the calculated analyses. The final part shows future development of this modeling tool.JRC.G.2-Support to external securit

JRC Sea Level Database

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission has developed a storm surge system for the Tropical Cyclones included in the Global Disasters Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) and the Storm Surge Calculation System (SSCS) for the storm surge events in Europe. Every day the results of these calculation systems are compared with the measurements included in the JRC Sea Level Database. This database includes the sea level measurements, theoretical sea levels tides and storm surge for more than 1000 stations around the world and is wildly used in storm surge and tsunami activities. Currently, the alert levels in the JRC storm surge systems are based only on the maximum storm surge heights and don’t include the effect of the tides. This effect is very important, because the increase of the water level is extremely damaging when the storm surge coincides with a period of high tide. In this analysis, the JRC Sea Level Database is used to show the importance of the tides in the JRC storm surge alert systems (GDACS and SSCS).JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

JRC storm surge system: new developments

JRC has developed the first storm surge calculation system for the Tropical Cyclones (TCs) included in the Global Disasters Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) in 2011. The TCs are not the only weather system that can generate a storm surge event, therefore a new Storm Surge Calculation System (SSCS) has been developed in 2013, to simulate the storm surge also in Europe. JRC has recently developed and implemented a new storm surge system, using a new hydrodynamic code and new atmospheric forecasts, creating several new SSCS bulletins and TCs GDACS web pages. This report describes the new procedures developed.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Network of European Facilities I: European Network of Crisis Management Laboratories (ENCML)

This policy report focuses on the Network of European Facilities. It draws attention to requirements to initiate the network, methods to carry out experiments and to how the activities of the ENCML will feed into the Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre (DRMKC)JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Continuous Harmonics Analysis of Sea Level Measurements: Description of a new method to determine sea level measurement tidal component

Removing the tidal component from sea level measurement in the case of Tropical Cyclones or Tsunami is very important to distinguish the tide contribution from the one of the Natural events. The report describes the methodology used by JRC in the de-tiding process and that is used for thousands of sea level measurement signals collected in the JRC Sea Level Database.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

JRC storm surge system for Europe: JRC SSCS bulletins and the new GDACS system

The storm surge is an abnormal rise of water above the astronomical tides, generated by strong winds and a drop in the atmospheric pressure, due to the passage of a Tropical Cyclone (TC) or an intense low pressure system in general. The JRC has developed the first storm surge calculation system for the TCs in 2011, including the results in the Global Disasters Alert and Coordination System (GDACS). The TCs are not the only weather system that can generate a storm surge event, therefore the JRC has developed a new Storm Surge Calculation System (SSCS) in 2013, to simulate the storm surge also in Europe. The SSCS system has been established at the JRC in the frame of GDACS and it is intended as a series of procedures that use meteorological forecasts forcing conditions produced by several meteorological centers to obtain the expected sea level rise along the coasts. Every day several SSCS bulletins are created for different areas of Europe. The JRC is currently implementing this system also in GDACS. This report describes the procedures of this new storm surge system developed by the JRC and the SSCS bulletins produced every day, as well as the implementation of this system in GDACS.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

01 April 2007 Solomon Island Tsumani: Case Study to Validate JRC Tsunami Codes

On April 1st 2007 a large earthquake of magnitude 8.1 occurred offshore Solomon Islands at 20:40:38 UTC. Numerical simulations of the tsunami event caused by the earthquake have been performed to compare the results obtained by the SWAN-JRC code (Annunziato, 2007), the TUNAMI (Imamura, 1996) and the HYFLUX2 (Franchello, 2008). The analysis conducted using these numerical simulations were also compared with NOAA-MOST code unit source results. The tsunami event has been simulated considering several options for the seismological parameters as input data: Finite Fault Model (USGS, 2007), the Centroid Moment Tensor fault model and other mechanisms derived from the field survey analysis (Tanioka model). The main aim of this study is to assess how the different fault models affect the overall results and to perform a comparison among the various codes in the wave propagation phase. Another objective of this study is to use HYFLUX2 code to calculate inundation and compare the simulation results with site field measurements. The study has been separated into two main parts. The first one represents the collection of information about focal mechanisms: the fault analysis in chapter 4 covers one of the main aims of this research where different fault scenarios have been tested using published field data. The second part describes the different calculations that have been performed in order to analyze the response of the wave propagation models to various fault deformation models. For the inundation assessment, more detailed calculations at 300m grid size resolutions have been performed, using the fault model that best represent the deformation. The calculations in the propagation assessment subsection were performed using: SWAN-JRC, HYFLUX2, TUNAMI-N2 and NOAA-MOST code. In the inundation assessment the HYFLUX2 numerical code, initialized with the Tanioka fault model was used. The deformation comparison with field measured data shows that none of the ¿quick¿ fault mechanism was able to estimate correctly the measured value. The best model is the empirical model by Tanioka which was obtained by trying to reproduce the measured value. From the published fault mechanism the one that shows a better correlation with measurements is the simple cosinuosoidal model. Results of simulations done with 300 m grid, show a maximum wave height of 7.5 m. Though the maximum run up reported was 10 m in Tapurai site, Simbi Island, the simulation results are encouraging.JRC.DG.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen

JRC Field Tracking Tool

The report describes the activities performed for the JRC Field Collection Tool. The programme uses 3 components: one for a PDA, one for a Notebook and a server in order to collect data on the field and display them immediately on a server. The Notebook section is used to prepare the mission.JRC.DG.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen

Validation of the JRC Tsunami Propagation and Inundation Codes

In the last years several numerical codes have been developed to analyse tsunami waves. Most of these codes use a finite difference numerical approach giving good results for tsunami wave propagation, but with limitations in modelling inundation processes. The HyFlux2 model has been developed to simulate inundation scenario due to dam break, flash flood and tsunami-wave run-up. The model solves the conservative form of the two-dimensional shallow water equations using a finite volume method. The implementation of a shoreline-tracking method provides reliable results. HyFlux2 robustness has been tested using several tsunami events. The main aim of this study is code validation by means of comparing different code results with available measurements. Another objective of the study is to evaluate how the different fault models could generate different results that should be considered for coastal planning. Several simulations have been performed to compare HyFlux2 code with SWAN-JRC code and the TUNAMI-N2. HyFlux2 has been validated taking advantage of the extensive seismic, geodetic measurements and post-tsunami field surveys performed after the Nias March 28th tsunami. Although more detailed shallow bathymetry is needed to assess the inundation, diverse results in the wave heights have been revealed when comparing the different fault mechanism. Many challenges still exist for tsunami researchers especially when concern to early warning systems as shown in this Nias March 28th tsunami.JRC.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen

The JRC Tsunami Assessment Modelling System

This report describes the JRC Tsunami Assessment Tool, which is a complex computer arrangement whose objective is to predict a Tsunami¿s behaviour when minimal parameters are known, which is the condition when an earthquake is firstly measured. Therefore knowing the position of the earthquake (lat/lon) and the Magnitude of the event, the programme will calculate the fault characteristics, the Tsunami generation and displacement, and the identification of the location on the coast which will be most likely affected.JRC.G.2-Support to external securit