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IUGG XXIV General Assembly July 2-13, 2007 Perugia, Italy<br />

(S) - <strong>IASPEI</strong> - International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's<br />

Interior<br />

JSS002 Oral Presentation 1770<br />

Earthquake-generated tsunamis in the Mediterranean Sea: scenarios of<br />

potential threats to the coast of Italy<br />

Dr. Stefano Lorito<br />

Department of Seismology and Tectonophysics INGV<br />

Mara Monica Tiberti, Roberto Basili, Alessio Piatanesi, Gianluca Valensise<br />

We calculated the impact on the Italian coasts of a large set of tsunamis resulting from earthquakes<br />

generated by selected fault zones of the Mediterranean Sea. Our approach merges updated knowledge<br />

on the regional tectonic setting and scenario-like calculations of expected tsunami impact.We focussed<br />

on potential source zones located at short, intermediate and large distance from our target coastlines.<br />

For each zone we determined a Maximum Credible Earthquake and described the geometry, kinematics<br />

and size of its associated Typical Fault. We then let the Typical Fault float along strike of its parent<br />

source zone and simulated all tsunamis it could trigger. Simulations are based on the solution of the<br />

nonlinear shallow water equations through a finite-difference technique. We investigate the tsunami<br />

threat to Italy coasts by both analyzing the travel-times and maximum water elevation field, and<br />

aggregate the results to quantify the threat from each source zone as a whole.We found a highly<br />

variable impact for tsunamis generated by the different zones. For example, a large Hellenic Arc<br />

earthquake will produce a much higher tsunami wave (up to 5 m) than those of the other two source<br />

zones (up to 1.5 m). This implies that tsunami scenarios in the Mediterranean Sea must necessarily be<br />

computed at the scale of the entire basin. The procedure can be easily replicated for other coastal areas<br />

of the Mediterranean. Our work represents a pilot study for constructing a basin-wide tsunami scenario<br />

database to be used for tsunami hazard assessment and early warning.<br />

Keywords: tsunamis, mediterranean, seismotectonics

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