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

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

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

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

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

Seismic Risk Assessment Tools Workshop

Held in the European Crisis Management Laboratory on 11-12 May 2017, the Workshop brought together on one side the developers of some of the most widely used modern seismic risk assessment tools and on the other a number of Civil Protection authorities from countries of the European Civil Protection Mechanism. The objective was to demonstrate the use and capabilities of the tools, explore the possible use in near-real-time impact assessment and promote their use in risk planning and disaster response. The systems presented in the workshop demonstrated a very high sophistication and increased flexibility in accepting data from a large number of sources and formats. Systems that were initially developed on a national scale can now work on a global level with little effort and the use of global-scale exposure data is almost seamless. An urgent need for more accurate exposure data being openly available was identified, as well as the need of proper use of the fragility curves. Inter-system collaboration and interoperability in some cases to increase ease of use was greatly appreciated and encouraged. All systems participated in a real-time simulation exercise on previously unknown seismic data provided by the JRC; some additional automation might be in order, but in general all systems demostrated a capacity to produce results on a near-real-time basis. The demonstrations were unanimously welcomed as very useful by the participating Civil Protection Authorities, most of which are either using a locally-developed system of moving towards using one of those presented in the workshop.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Statistical Validation and Skill Assessment of Hyflux2 Model

The Joint Research Center (JRC) has developed extensive experience in tsunami early warning systems, using the JRC-SWAN finite difference code for wave propagation simulation and the JRC finite-volume HyFlux2 code for wave propagation and inundation modelling over the last years. Since 2011, NWP (Numerical Weather Prediction) atmospheric forcing terms have been included in the HyFlux2 code for simulating storm surge events. In the current work, the skill assessment of Hylfux2 is performed. A wide range of verification metrics has been utilised for both Hyflux2 model data sets namely NOF (raw forecasts with no adjustment) and YOF (post forecasts by applying an optimal type of offset). Investigating over typical metrics as bias, root mean square error (RMSE) and centred root mean square differences (CRMSD), inter-comparisons were possible versus another integrated storm surge forecast system namely KASSANDRA (KASS) of ISMAR-CNR. Referring to the ability of reproducing the variability of observations, inter-comparing over 10 common stations revealed that Hyflux2 YOF configuration although in the right direction, is not reaching the quality of KASS system for T+24-hour horizon. Hyflux2 normalised standard deviation manages to reach the 0.81 value compared to 0.97 value of KASS (with perfect score: 1.0). On the other hand, the most important message seems to be the one coming from the inter-comparison between CRMSD scores. Hylfux2 YOF forecasts appear to have a comparable CRMSD score (6.42 cm) to the score coming from KASS system (5.86 cm) for T+24 hours. Furthermore, there are stations (like Civitavecchia, Genova, Napoli and Palermo) over which Hyflux2 YOF forecasts score considerably better than KASS system, whereas the rest of YOF forecasts appear to have a lower (but still of high quality) correlation coefficient (0.80) score compared to the one coming from KASS system (0.89 cm) for T+24 hours. Another important area that special type of metrics was used (such as accuracy, frequency bias, hit rate, false alarm ratio, probability of false detection, success ratio, threat score, equitable threat score, true skill statistics, odds ratio and odds ratio skill score) has been the ability of Hyflux2 to provide useful (warning) forecast guidance in cases of high-intensity storm surge events. The selection of an optimal (95% percentile) threshold was made being high enough to be considered as extreme but also capable of providing enough cases for robust statistics. The main outcome of such an approach has revealed that 72% (T+72 hours) to 79% (T+12 hours) of all Hyflux2 forecasts were correct over central Mediterranean (CMEDI) for both NOF and YOF forecasts. The corresponding values for west Mediterranean (WMEDI) were reaching even higher values (80 - 81% to 88%) with similar skill values for both NOF and YOF configurations, but it should be stressed out that these results have considered a large number of correct negatives (referring to non-extremes events). Focussing over high-intensity events (that have been observed) Hylfux2 appears to have considerable forecasting limitations being able to capture only the 23% (T+72) to 34% (T+12) of events while missing more than 70% of the high-intensity events at T+48 hours. Such forecasting limitations become obvious during the in-depth analysis over two case study extreme events taken place over Ravenna (6 February 2015) and Venice (29 February 2016). The capabilities of both NOF & YOF forecasts based on ECMWF relatively low-resolution forcing terms to provide useful guidance in Ravenna case found to be limited even if both NOF & YOF managed to provide a relatively useful early warning for the extreme case of Venice. It appears that both NOF & YOF configurations (based on ECMWF forcing terms) have certain limitations to provide the best possible setup for detecting and simulating such high-impact events. On the other hand, HYflux2 YOF forecasts based on various COSMO model high-resolution forcing terms seem to do quite much better in capturing both events and providing useful (early) warning to the user. It seems that for such high-impact events higher-resolution forcing terms are necessary to correctly resolve the full extent and magnitude of the event. This higher resolution feature is most probably the reason why Hyflux2 based on COSMO model (run operationally by the Italian Air Force Weather Meteorological Service) high-resolution forcing terms provides much more useful guidance in cases of extreme events.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen