Abstract
Abstract. Coastal areas are highly exposed to natural hazards associated with the sea. In all cases where there is historical evidence for devastating tsunamis, as is the case of the southern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, there is a need for quantitative hazard tsunami assessment to support spatial planning. Also, local authorities must be able to act towards the population protection in a preemptive way, to inform "what to do" and "where to go" and in an alarm, to make people aware of the incoming danger. With this in mind, we investigated the inundation extent, run-up and water depths, of a 1755-like event on the region of Huelva, located on the Spanish southwestern coast, one of the regions that was affected in the past by several high energy events, as proved by historical documents and sedimentological data. Modelling was made with a slightly modified version of the COMCOT (Cornell Multi-grid Coupled Tsunami Model) code. Sensitivity tests were performed for a single source in order to understand the relevance and influence of the source parameters in the inundation extent and the fundamental impact parameters. We show that a 1755-like event will have a dramatic impact in a large area close to Huelva inundating an area between 82 and 92 km2 and reaching maximum run-up around 5 m. In this sense our results show that small variations on the characteristics of the tsunami source are not too significant for the impact assessment. We show that the maximum flow depth and the maximum run-up increase with the average slip on the source, while the strike of the fault is not a critical factor as Huelva is significantly far away from the potential sources identified up to now. We also show that the maximum flow depth within the inundated area is very dependent on the tidal level, while maximum run-up is less affected, as a consequence of the complex morphology of the area.
Highlights
Europe experienced tsunami hazards since historic times, originated from different triggering mechanisms
The range of water depths obtained in the simulations presented before, are clearly sufficient to flood houses and cause considerable destruction in the areas which are closer to the coast
Like Huelva, Punta Umbria, Corrales, are affected in the scenarios simulated previously with relatively high water depths depending on the simulated source
Summary
Europe experienced tsunami hazards since historic times, originated from different triggering mechanisms. Within the Gulf of Cadiz area, the largest well studied event is the great Lisbon 1755 earthquake and tsunami (Baptista et al, 1998a, b; Solares, 2001; Solares and Arroyo, 2004). It stroke the Portuguese, the Spanish and the Northern African coasts, severely damaging near shore localities, as described by a large amount of historical documents that testify the impact of the tsunami waves. This work is a contribution to the TRANSFER EU project
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