Handbook of tsunami hazard and damage scenarios : SCHEMA (Scenarios for Hazard-induced Emergencies Management), project n°030963, specific targeted research project, space priority

The handbook on tsunami scenarios is the result of intense work performed under the European FP6 co-funded project SCHEMA over a 39-month period from 2007 to 2010 by a consortium of 11 partners led by Geosciences Consultants (Paris). The handbook is one of the products of the project and has been conceived to illustrate the basic concepts and methods elaborated and applied in the project to produce tsunami scenarios in view of providing tools to assess tsunami hazard and potential damage. One of the main objectives was the elaboration of a general methodology that can be used in all possible cases and that can be easily adapted to the needs of the end users, i.e. chiefly public administrators responsible for planning coastal zone development and protection strategies as well as people and organisations involved in disaster management and mitigation policies. For these reasons, the SCHEMA methodology has been applied to five test sites (Rabat, Morocco; Setúbal, Portugal; Mandelieu, France; Catania, Italy; Balchik, Bulgaria) differing very much from one another, and it has been tested with the active involvement of the end users, so ensuring that it will provide practical and useful tools and it is flexible enough to cover local needs. The handbook first defines what is meant by tsunami hazard scenario and by tsunami damage scenario, as well as the concept of the worst-case credible scenario. This latter is a key-point in the handbook because the choice of the SCHEMA consortium was to adopt the approach of the worst-case credible scenario rather than of scenarios deriving from probabilistic analyses, since it is believed that there are no sufficient knowledge and data at present to assess return time probabilities of tsunamis and consequently to build on it the corresponding probabilistic scenarios. The methodology, briefly outlined in chapter 3, consists of three main phases, in turn embracing more sub-phases or steps: namely 1) elaboration of a set of tsunami hazard scenarios for each test site (also referred to as target area), scenarios that are combined together in a single aggregated scenario; 2) vulnerability analysis of exposed elements based on earth observation data (collected through field survey and interpretation of satellite images); 3) development of tsunami damage scenarios. Phase 1 is described in detail in chapter 4, while phases 2 and 3 are illustrated in chapter 5. This handbook has the purpose to highlight the SCHEMA approach to the tsunami scenarios and is deliberately short and synthetic. All the details on the methods and on their application can be found in the very many and lengthy documents (deliverables) produced by the consortium during the lifetime of the project. Here only the main concepts are given and are illustrated by a number of examples taken from the work performed by the partners of the consortium. The final chapter of the handbook looks at the future, mainly emphasising the future challenges and how the methodology can be improved to tackle them. In this context the main subject is the multi-hazard, or in other words, how scenarios can be built to cover not only tsunamis, but also other dangerous phenomena. The challenge is open in the sense (i) that there is already a vast acknowledgment that this is a serious and mature problem and (ii) that at the same time no general way has been yet established to handle it. We expect that important developments will be made in the next years.