INGV launches the official website of its Tsunami Warning Center to offer the public information and insights on tsunami risk in the Mediterranean Sea
It's online since today, May 4, the official website of the Tsunami Warning Center of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (CAT-INGV) to link http://www.ingv.it/cat
The aim of the new platform is to make citizens aware of the tsunami risk in Italy, still little known due to the relatively low frequency of large tsunamis in the Mediterranean, and above all to provide tools that allow for the reduction of the impact in the event of an event.
The INGV CAT is one of the three key elements of the SiAM, the National Alert System for Tsunamis of seismic origin, together with the National Civil Protection Department (DPC) and the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA).
Made up of five macro-sections, each containing dedicated subsections, the CAT-INGV website makes available to the public many information and insights on tsunamis: how they form, how they spread, where they are most likely, how we can defend ourselves, which are the international and national institutions that deal with the protection and communication of risk. Particular emphasis is placed on the danger and tsunami risk in the Mediterranean, where the CAT has been operating since 2016 as Tsunami Service Provider for the national civil protection system and for many countries in the Euro-Mediterranean area.
The CAT website complements the one on the seismic tsunami hazard of the NEAM area (North-East Atlantic, Mediterranean and connected seas), published in 2017 after the conclusion of the European project TSUMAPS-NEAM (Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Maps for the NEAM Region), coordinated by INGV and recently supplemented by studies and insights.
In fact, tsunamis are events which, although rare, can be particularly destructive even in our seas, like those which have hit Indonesia, Chile and Japan in the last twenty years. For example, the Messina and Reggio Calabria earthquake-tsunami of 28 December 1908 should be mentioned, which caused waves over 11 meters high in some areas of Reggio. Smaller events are much more frequent and can potentially be equally dangerous: a tsunami wave of a few tens of centimeters can knock down doors, move cars and drag adults, even of a robust build, into the sea.
Finally, INGV has also recently published the Database of tsunami observations in Italy, a platform that allows you to examine and deepen all the information on the map on the 300 observations relating to the over 72 tsunamis known in Italy, and, in the NHESS magazine (Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences), the first large-scale systematic study to evaluate tsunami risk perception in southern Italy.
