{"id":868,"date":"2020-02-26T11:05:39","date_gmt":"2020-02-26T11:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gein.noa.gr\/?page_id=868"},"modified":"2021-12-07T18:23:23","modified_gmt":"2021-12-07T16:23:23","slug":"tsunami","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gein.noa.gr\/en\/research\/research-topics\/tsunami\/","title":{"rendered":"Tsunami"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Continuous monitoring of tide-gauges for possible tsunamis after strong submarine or near coast earthquakes. Early warning system after strong underwater earthquakes in Greece. Modeling of tsunami waves to locate the candidate tsunamigenic fault sources. Research on the size and distribution of paleo-tsunamis in southeastern Mediterranean.<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Why study this topic? The challenges<\/b><\/h2>\n

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People have always built their communities preferably near the sea, where the landscape was more subdued, the rivers produced more fertile land for cultivation and the waterways offered an easy and safe way to move and trade. However, since antiquity (see \u2018The Peloponnesian War\u2019 of <\/span>Thucydides<\/span><\/i>) people realised that the sea is associated with various challenges and dangers, one of them being the tsunami waves. These sea waves, that often follow submarine earthquakes, may reach as high as 30 meters with the power of water breaking onto the coastline killing hundreds of thousands of people and destroying associated critical infrastructure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Tsunamis usually occur along active subduction zones after strong submarine earthquakes. However, in addition to being generated by earthquakes, tsunamis may be also generated by underwater or coastal landslides, volcanic activity or, even, the fall of meteorites on earth. Nevertheless, our understanding on tsunamis is still evolving. For example, the mechanism of tsunami generation due to submarine landslides, which currently has a significant impact on the assessment of tsunami risk in coastal areas, entered the “radar” of scientists after the 1998 tsunami in Papua New Guinea. Some of the questions that modern research tries to answer are why some strong submarine earthquakes along a subduction zone produce tsunamis while others do not? How can we improve the early warning system, especially for the Greek area where the arrival times of the first wave after an earthquake are small due to the proximity of faults to the coast? How can we raise public awareness so that people not only know the history of tsunamis in their own region but also know how to evacuate in case of a tsunami emergency.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t

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Our key research activities<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

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