Assessment of tsunami hazard in the Italian seas

Abstract

A method for the evaluation of tsunami potential in the seas surrounding Italy is presented. A major difficulty for performing reliable estimates of tsunami occurrence is that the existing tsunami catalog for Italy includes a small number of cases. This is due partly to the catalog incompleteness, strangely more pronounced in our century, and partly to the relative infrequency of tsunamis along the Italian seas. Evaluation of tsunami activity is therefore deduced by complementing the tsunami catalog data with data on seismicity that are by far more abundant and reliable. Analysis of seismicity and assessment of earthquake rate in coastal and submarine regions form the basis of the present method to perform tsunami potential estimates for Italy. One essential limitation of the method is that only tsunamis of seismic origin are taken into account, which leads to an underestimation of the tsunami potential. Since tsunamis generated by earthquakes are much more frequent than events produced by slumps or volcanic eruptions, the underestimation is not dramatic and very likely affects only a limited portion of the Italian coasts. In the present application of the method, eight separate regions have been considered that together cover all the coasts of Italy. In each region, seismicity has been independently examined and the earthquake potential has been calculated in small 20′ × 20′ cells. Then, on the basis of suitable assumptions, tsunami potential has been evaluated in each cell. According to this study, the Italian coasts that are the most exposed to the attacks of locally generated tsunamis are to be found in the Messina Straits, in Tyrrhenian coasts of Calabria, in the Ionian Sicilian coasts around Catania, and in the Gargano promontory in the Southern Adriatic Sea. Furthermore, this study confirms that the Northern Adriatic Sea has a low level of tsunami potential, in agreement with recent studies emphasizing that the large historical events concerning this region included in the first versions of the Italian tsunami catalog are largely overestimated and must be decreased.