The Italian national early warning system for tsunami events generated by earthquakes
ISPRA is involved in the implementation of this system according to the Directive of the President of the Council of Ministers of 17 February 2017, published in the Official Gazette no. 128 of 5 June 2017. The Italian national early warning system for tsunami (SiAM) is composed of three institutions (ISPRA, INGV, Italian Civil Protection Department) with different tasks, which contribute together to the implementation of the common objective of alerting, as soon as possible and with the available tools, all the administrations (including local authorities) and operational bodies potentially involved in a tsunami event.
ISPRA is in charge of the transmission in real time of the sea level data registered by its tide gauge network to the Tsunami Alert Centre (CAT) operated by INGV, the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, which assesses the possibility that a particular earthquake, with epicentre in the sea or in the immediate vicinity, may generate a tsunami and estimates the expected arrival times along the exposed coasts, immediately informing the Italian Civil Protection Department, if needed.
The SiAM system fully implements the principles established within the Intergovernmental Coordination Group of UNESCO for the establishment of a Tsunami Warning System in the NEAM region, the North East Atlantic, Mediterranean and connect seas (ICG/NEAMTWS).
SiAM also takes into account two fundamental aspects that affect the entire architecture: the small size of the Mediterranean basin, which makes the time for any alert limited, and the causes of triggering of the tsunami event. Earthquakes are the main cause of tsunamis (about 80%). Although the tsunami may have different triggers than seismic ones, the phenomena behind these additional causes are not currently systematically detectable in advance of the event and, therefore, do not allow the activation of a warning system. SiAM, therefore, has the task of monitoring and alerting in case of possible tsunamis of only seismic origin that occur in the Mediterranean Sea.
SiAM does not directly reach the population to be alerted through the procedures defined in the municipal civil protection plan, in conjunction with the plans of the other territorial levels. To support the local authorities in this effort of establishing alerting procedures for the population within the respective civil protection plans, the Civil Protection Department issued in November 2018 the national guidelines on how to update the emergency plans of public administrations and operational bodies in case of tsunami risk.
The national guidelines written with the contribution of INGV and ISPRA, include a probabilistic tsunami hazard map for the entire national coastline http://sgi2.isprambiente.it/tsunamimap/ elaborated by the Italian Geological Survey of ISPRA.
The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission supports the SiAM implementation through an agreement with ISPRA renewed in October 2018 for 5 years. This agreement includes joint actions on the use and management of innovative sea level buoys and advanced cost-effective instruments to improve the reliability and the effectiveness of the implemented strategies to monitor and analyze real-time tsunami events.
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission Tsunami Programme (IOC-TSU)
North-Eastern Atlantic, Mediterranean and connected seas Tsunami Information Centre (NEAMTIC)
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