TÜBİTAK Marmara Araştırma Merkezi

Objectives: To initiate, design, develop and validate a stand alone methodology to assess the potential impacts of combined hazards involving tsunamis that may occur in the Mediterranean basin. The key ambition is to demonstrate that earth observation data allows to define generic rules to calculate vulnerability maps, when, for instance, seismic and tsunamis events are combined. The key features of this research and development work are:

the clarification of concepts such as vulnerability, hazards, scenarios, in order to produce documents and maps accessible and understood by end-users (civil protection, rescue planners).
the development of a generic methodology, validated by end-users, to produce scenarios of multi-hazard impacts including tsunamis
the extraction of vulnerability and hazard level indicators, as used in the generic methodology, from earth observation data
a first validation of the methodology on real life cases as observed during the recent tsunami in Asia
a thorough validation of the resulting prototype methodology on 4 test cases typical of four different environments.

for civil security organisations: a comprehensive and homogeneous technique to assess multi risk levels based on intrinsic vulnerability variables (building heights, building types, inhabitant description) and environment variables (density of buildings per unit area, road width,.) and, thus, a technique capable of helping develop preventive emergency measures that make sense anywhere.
for rescue planners: a clear cut description of accessible areas under multi disaster occurrence (floods and earthquakes, or earthquakes and tsunamis), to help rescue planners design effective rescue operations since they are able to evaluate vulnerability variables under crisis organisation modes.
for public safety policy makers: a set of policy recommendations to standardise data collection and preparation for vulnerability studies, based on multi event simulation scenarios that concentrate prevention and education efforts within the most exposed areas of the Mediterranean basin.
for insurance companies: useful spatial data related to potential maximum claims for building damages within potentially flooded zones, thus allowing them to answer questions such as : what level of premiums should be set for buildings, contents loss and business interruption loss insurance in risky areas ? what is the potential level of claims for a particular portfolio of insured assets in a given location ?

Participating Organizations: Geosciences Consultancy, France (Project Manager), Spacebel, Belgium, Algosystems, Greece, Hidromod, Portugal, University of Bologna, Italy, Coventry University, UK, National Observatory of Athens, Greece, Royal Remote Sensing Center, Morocco, ACRI ST, France, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria, JRC, ISPRA, Institute for Protection and Security of Citizen, Italy