Group on Earth Observations (GEO)
2006 Activities
Task DI-06-08
Area
Title
Disasters
Promote the cooperation of national and international agencies towards a multihazard approach to address more effectively and systematically coastal risks (e.g.
from tropical cyclones, storm surges, tsunamis, land slides, volcanic eruption)
Relevant Committee
User Interface
Description of the Work to be Performed
There are many challenges that prohibit a multi-disciplinary, multi-hazards approach to addressing risks:
lack of national legislation and related decision-making process that requires and enables multiorganizational approach to addressing these issues, Organizational issues (i.e., lack of organizational
incentives and clear mandates for working in a multi-disciplinary approach), budgetary issues, Technical
issues related to effective collaboration across disciplines.
1) Promote at the ministerial level, legislation that promotes multi-agency approach to addressing risks of
various hazards (including in coastal regions). Furthermore, promote the importance of organizational
structures and incentives that would enable multi-disciplinary, multi-organization approach to address
risks relevant to coastal zone.
2) To promote at ministerial level the need for consolidating and sharing the knowledge of processes in the
coastal zones among all agencies involved in addressing risk at the coastal zones (Meteorological
services, hydrological services, ocean services, coastal zone engineers and managers, etc.).
3) In collaboration with key agencies, working at the international level on issues related to observing,
forecasting and warnings (e.g., WMO, IOC, other…) to identify major gaps in the technical aspects from
observations to modelling and forecasting across disciplines/hazards that pose risk to the coastal areas
and to facilitate the development of a multi-hazards framework where technical capacities, resources and
infrastructure can be best utilized to address risks in the coastal zones.
4) Promote the development of multi-purpose platforms of observations of multi-hazards
5) Promote the need for multi-hazard regional warning centers in support of national early warning
capacities
Output & Deliverables
Intermediate reports to GEO Plenary on technical, operational, financial and legal progress at national,
regional and global levels.
Calendar (incl. milestones)
Start 2nd Quarter 2006 - ongoing through 2006/2007
Responsible Entity, Participants
Lead Organizations:
WMO (NDPM, Don Hinsman, dhinsman@wmo.int)
Contributing Organizations:
Australia (John Schneider, john.schneider@ga.gov.au);
ISPRS (PIERO BOCCARDO, PIERO.BOCCARDO@POLITO.IT);
Netherlands (TNO, Chris Bremmer, chris.bremmer@tno.nl);
Group on Earth Observations (GEO)
2006 Activities
Task DI-06-08
USA tbd;
IGOS (Geohazards & coastal Themes);
IOC (JCOMM, Patricio Bernal p.bernal@unesco.org, Boram Lee b.lee@unesco.org)
Germany (H Mehl, DFD-UG, Harald.Mehl@dlr.de; M. Bittner, DLR DFD-KA, Michael.Bittner@dlr.de;
GKSS: (Carlo van Bernem: bernem@gkss.de); GKSS: (Jochen Horstmann: horstmann@gkss.de);
Portugal (CIMA - Centre for Marine and Environmental Research of the University of Algarve, Tomasz
Boski - tboski@ualg.pt); Centro de Geofísica de Évora, University of Évora, Ana Maria Silva asilva@uevora.pt; IM - Portugal, Adérito Serrão; a.serrao@meteo.pt);
Spain (IGME, A. García Cortés, garcia.cortes@igme.es);
Thailand (Thai Meteorological Department: Director, Weather Forecast Bureau: tmd_inter@tmd.go.th and
Director, Seismological Bureau, e-mail: sumalee_tmd@hotmail.com; Department of Disaster Prevention and
Mitigation, Thailand: Mr. Suppapimit PAORIK, e-mail: ITDPM@disaster.go.th);
Greece (GSCP, Min. Env.)
Italy (APAT, Italian Agency for Environmental Protection and Technical Services, Geological Survey of
Italy. Contact point: Claudio Campobasso, claudio.campobasso@apat.it & Eutizio Vittori,
eutizio.vittori@apat.it; Italian Space Agency (ASI). Contact point: Laura CANDELA, laura.candela@asi.it;
ENEA- Prot-Prev Unit. Contact point: Edi VALPREDA, valpreda@bologna.enea.it; Pierluigi SODDU,
Italian Civil Protection Department, pierluigi.soddu@protezionecivile.it);
Contributing Users:
France (French ministry for ecology see document FR_MEDD_Tsunami_prevention.doc,
mailto:philippe.sabourault@ecologie.gouv.fr);
FDSN (Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (Pete Mouginis-Mark, pmm@higp.hawaii.edu);
IOC (JCOMM, Boram Lee b.lee@unesco.org)
South Africa (National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC), Mmboneni Muofhe,
Mmboneni.Muofhe@dst.gov.za);
UNESCO (Robert Missotten, R.Missotten@unesco.org);
Financial Contributions (from GEO Operations Budget)
None
Annex Task DI-06-08
GEO Member Potential Contributions Reported to date:
Portugal
(i) CIMA research is focused on marine and coastal areas in a multidisciplinary approach, therefore there is
already some work done on coastal hazard identification and also preliminary approaches on hazard
mitigation measures. In this sense, the contribution to the tasks may be in the form of collaborating with
other institutions for knowledge and data sharing and also in the form of efforts to the interoperability of
coastal hazard identification and characterization methodologies.
(ii) Identification of active geological structures, evaluation of geological hazards related with extreme
overflowing situations, landslides, coastal erosion, chemical contamination of soils and surface and ground
water reservoirs in South Portugal. Characterization of magma storage and magma plumbing mechanisms at
the Azores; consequences to the prediction of seismic and volcanic events.
(iii) At present IM is developing activities in cooperation with other entities, both national and international
ones, in the areas of meteorological, maritime and geophysical risks in the coastal zone. Collaboration in
meteorology has been essentially with: SNBPC, IH, Captaincies, INAG, Portuguese Committee for IOC and
IOFCL, at national level, and with INM, Météo-France, Meteorological Service of Morocco, ECMWF and
Working Groups of WMO and JCOMM, at international level. In the area of geophysics, besides cooperation
with national entities, it is foreseen to promote cooperation with Spain and Morocco in seismology.
Italy
- Project IFFI: INVENTORY OF LANDSLIDES PHENOMENA IN ITALY. The IFFI inventory provides
the distribution of landslides affecting the italian territory. Within the cited task, from this inventory the
Italian coastal areas susceptible to landsliding (landslide hazard) are identified (APAT).
- Project REnDIS: Repertorio Nazionale Difesa del Suolo in Italia. The ReNDIS database provides land
planning data, including land use restrictions, together with information on structural works funded by the
italian government (MoE, Department for Civil Protection). Concerning the Italian coastal areas, from this
database it is possible to highlight the effects of structural works in the reduction of hydro-geological risk
(APAT).
- Project ITHACA: ITaly HAzard from CApable faults. Capable faults are active faults that rupture the earth
surface, commonly during strong earthquakes. The ITHACA database provides the distribution and
characterization of capable faults for the Italian territory. From this database it is possible to show the italian
coastal areas affected by a significant capable fault risk (APAT).
- Project Active faults in the circum-Adriatic region. Mapping of the active crustal deformation in the
circum-Adriatic region, in order to produce an homogeneous map of active faults, necessary to identify most
hazardous areas and quantify rates of tectonic deformation and seismic activity. Now there are Working
Groups from Albania, Bosnia-Erzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Greece, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Italy and
Slovenia (Preliminary project developed under COST Action625, APAT).
- Project Coastal region: monitoring and risk management. The ASI approach in the coastal pilot project is
multi-hazard. Before emergency it would like to acquire knowledge on the status of the coastal zone, and
during emergency management it is focused on effects. But we are also interested in construction of early
warning systems. So it considers all causes: coastal floods due to storm surges, tsunamis, volcanic eruption,
subsidence, landslides, sea level rise, erosion (ASI).
- Project Valparaiso Project. Transfer of vulnerability evaluation methodologies for complex urban areas
through Fuzzy Logic techniques applied to the image processing within the context of global geological risk
evaluation (ENEA).
Spain
Project ESEOO: Establecimiento de un Sistema Español de Oceanografía Operacional. The main objective
of the project is the Development and implementation of a Spanish Operational Oceanography system able to
be used in emergency situations at sea, such us oil spill accidents or tracking of drifting objects. The system
will consist in several applications based on numerical modelling and analysis of oceanographic data, both
historical and real time. The applications based on numerical models will provide forecast of several
Physical parameters, such us winds, currents, sea surface temperature, waves and sea level.
(http://www.eseoo.org).
Annex Task DI-06-08
UNESCO
Cooperation on multi-hazard coastal vulnerability including flooding
Cooperation could be explored with the newly created UNESCO Institute in Tskuba, Japan, ICHARM. The
Institute is building up a worldwide cooperation effort to mitigate the negative effects of water related
hazards. In addition, the text of this task could be amended to incorporate another highly vulnerable
geographical region: mountainous areas. Proposed change, ‘Provide high-level incentives for the cooperation
of national and international agencies towards multi-hazard pilot focusing on “coastal hazards”. This
would link coastal flooding, storm surges, tropical cyclones and tsunami. This could, in future tasks, be
extended to “mountain hazards”, dealing with seismic activity, landslides and avalanches.”
WMO
(i) WMO will be initiating a task cross-cutting team from WMO/DPM, WMO/HWR, WMO/WWW,
WMO/APP/OCA and TCP Programmes and experts from WMO Technical Commissions, including CBS,
CHy, JCOMM (Joint IOC and WMO) (Q2 2006)
(ii) Through this task team, WMO will identify organization and national organizations involved in
vulnerability analysis and coastal risk management (Q3 2006)
(iii) The expert team and in cooperation with the partner agencies to identify and frame challenges (legislative,
organizational, technical, operational, capacity building, multi-disciplinary) and a coordinated work plan to
address different aspects of this issues through technical cooperation of WMO and IOC and other partners
Note: WMO will host a major Expert Meeting with key partners from ISDR system on “Multi-hazard Early
Warning Systems for Integrated Disaster Risk Management) (May 23-24, 2006).
Expected Outcomes: (i) Report of key challenges for a multi-hazard approach to enhance coastal risk
management via a shift towards vulnerability approach; (ii) Initiatives by lead bodies to address gaps and
needs.
Relevant EC Projects:
DG-INFSO: FP6-2005-IST-6 (Karen Fabbri, karen.fabbri@cec.eu.int and Guy Weets,
guy.weets@cec.eu.int)
DG-RTD: PAPA (BOOS, Erik Buch, ebu@dmi.dk);
DG-RTD: ESONET (IFREMER, Roland Person, Roland.Person@ifremer.fr);
DG-RTD: ARMONIA (T6 Piccola Società Cooperativa a Responsabilità Limitata, Katja Firus, k.firus@t6.it);