Documentary and Geological Records of Tsunamis in the Aegean Sea Region of Greece and their Potential Value to Risk Assessment and Disaster Management

Understanding the nature and impacts of tsunamis within the Aegean Sea region ofGreece is of importance to both the academic community and those organisationsconcerned with tsunami disaster management. In order to determine hazard and riskand consequently pre-plan mitigative strategies, it is necessary to analyse historical(documentary) and geological records of former tsunami events. Therefore, firstlythis paper provides a summary of the written sources of information on Aegeantsunamis paying particular attention to published catalogues. From the availabledata, it is noted that a large number of events have been reported during the last3500 years. Secondly, the paper provides a review of the published on-shore(terrestrial) geological records of tsunamis within the region. From this analysisit is seen that little geological evidence has been identified for the large numberof tsunamis reported in the catalogues. Thirdly, the paper considers the reliabilityof the written and geological records and how problems of accuracy, coverage,extent and reliability, may have potential implications for the estimation of hazardand risk. The paper concludes by making recommendations for disaster managers,geologists and historians to work closely together. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2002