Giuseppe Mastronuzzi

Determination of Tsunami Inundation Model Using Terrestrial Laser Scanner Techniques

The East Java Tsunami occurred on 3 June, 1994 remind us the possibility that these catastrophic events affect coastal area suddenly, without forewarning. On that occasion, human victims were concentrated in the Bali Island and in the nearly areas; the economic loss were limited on very poor regions, surely the most dramatic consequence of tsunami impact. This event has attracted the interest of the scientific community, increasing the number of geophysics and geodynamic studies, mainly concerning the generative mechanisms and the tsunami propagation. At the same time, studies aiming a better understanding of the morphological effects of past-tsunami impact have been performed along the coasts all around the world (Kelletat, 2009). Recently, the impact of the Indian Ocean Tsunami (IOT) on December 26, 2004 and its charge of about 230,000 victims in Thailand and in other countries facing the Indian Ocean, indigenous and citizen coming from all around the world, underlined the necessity to manage the human activities in coastal areas and to improve of the knowledge of the possible effects of a tsunami impact on the coast. Large coastal sectors were completely inundated, modified or even destroyed by the impact of the IOT (e.g.: Szczuciski et al., 2005; Kelletat et al., 2006, 2007; Lavigne et al., 2006; Richmond et al., 2006; Umitsu et al., 2007; Paris et al., 2007, 2009; Srinivasalu et al., 2007); post event surveys permitted to recognise morphological effects of its impact and, in the same time, to extend all obtained results on coastal sectors where similar evidences were recognised. Notwithstanding the immense number of data derived by the surveys performed all along the coast hit by the IOT, the debate about the correlation of some landforms/sediments and the extreme event responsible of their genesis/deposit is still open. At present, there are not undisputable signatures of landforms and/or fine sediments that allows discrimination between a past-extreme events sea storm, hurricane or tsunami deposition. This knowledge gap has given rise to a growing number of papers that examining the source and nature of landforms and sediments (e.g. Frohlich et al., 2009; Goto et al., 2007; 2010a; Kelletat, 2008; Kelletat et al., 2006, 2007; Mastronuzzi et al., 2006; Paris et al., 2009; Scheffers, 2006, 2008; Scheffers & Kelletat, 2005 and others). New data will come from the more recent events of September 30, 2009 around Samoa Islands and of February 28, 2010 in Chile; this last occurred exactly 50 years after the tsunami that in 1960 hit the coasts of the countries facing the Pacific Ocean (Fig. 1).

Integrating multidisciplinary instruments for assessing coastal vulnerability to erosion and sea level rise: lessons and challenges from the Adriatic Sea, Italy

The evolution of coastal and transitional environments depends upon the interplay of human activities and natural drivers, two factors that are strongly connected and many times conflicting. The urge for efficient tools for characterising and predicting the behaviour of such systems is nowadays particularly pressing, especially under the effects of a changing climate, and requires a deeper understanding of the connections among different drivers and different scales. To this aim, the present paper reviews the results of a set of interdisciplinary and coordinated experiences carried out in the Adriatic Sea (north-eastern Mediterranean region), discussing state-of-the art methods for coastal dynamics assessment and monitoring, and suggests strategies towards a more efficient coastal management. Coupled with detailed geomorphological information, the methodologies currently available for evaluating the different components of relative sea level rise facilitate a first identification of the flooding hazard in coastal areas, providing a fundamental element for the prioritization and identification of the sustainability of possible interventions and policies. In addition, hydro- and morpho-dynamic models are achieving significant advances in terms of spatial resolution and physical insight, also in a climatological context, improving the description of the interactions between meteo-oceanographic processes at the regional scale to coastal dynamics at the local scale. We point out that a coordinated use of the described tools should be promptly promoted in the design of survey and monitoring activities as well as in the exploitation of already collected data. Moreover, expected benefits from this strategy include the production of services and infrastructures for coastal protection with a focus on short-term forecast and rapid response, enabling the implementation of an event-oriented sampling strategy.