Design and challenges for a tsunami early warning system in the Marmara Sea

Abstract

Since 1900, around 90,000 people have lost their lives in 76 earthquakes in Turkey, with a total affected population of around 7 million and direct losses of around 25 billion USD. Based on a time-dependent model that includes coseismic and post-seismic effects of the 1999 Kocaeli earthquake with moment magnitude Mw = 7.4, Parsons (J Geophys Res. 109, 2004) concluded that the probability of an earthquake with Mw > 7 in the Sea of Marmara near Istanbul is 35 to 70 % in the next 30 years. According to a 2011 study, an earthquake with Mw = 7.25 on the Main Marmara Fault is expected to heavily damage or destroy 2 to 4 % of around 1,000,000 buildings in Istanbul with a population around 13 million, with 9 to 15 % of the buildings receiving medium damage and 20 to 34 %

KOERI’s Tsunami Warning System in the Eastern Mediterranean and Its Connected Seas: A Decade of Achievements and Challenges

“…In addition, the tsunami could have resulted in loss of lives if the earthquake had happened during the daytime in the middle of the tourist season [33]. In fact, this event was a bitter reminder of the inefficiencies of NEAMTWS in dealing with local and near-field tsunami threats and the need for possible supplementary mechanisms [34,35].…”

Tectonic Origin Tsunami Scenario Database for the Marmara Region

“…Depending on the landslide volume fundamentally, as proved by several previous studies, possible tsunamis from submarine landslides in the Marmara Sea could be significantly higher than those from earthquakes and waveforms from all the coasts around the Marmara Sea indicate that other residential areas might have had a high risk of tsunami hazards from submarine landslides, which can generate higher tsunami amplitudes and shorter arrival times, compared to Istanbul (Latcharote et al, 2016). To address this issue, Necmioglu (2016) proposed a tsunami warning system in the Marmara region coupled with the existing earthquake early warning system, which could work without waiting for any focal mechanism parameter determination that may lead to underestimate tsunami hazards in the case of a strike-slip fault earthquake, due to the fact that submarine landslides could generate large tsunamis in the Marmara Sea. That coupling as well as the use of tsunami scenario database would enable RTEMC-KOERI to have most efficient operations in tsunami early warning in Marmara region without having any gaps in the system.…”

Analysis of Long-Period Hazardous Waves in the Taiwan Marine Environment Monitoring Service

“…Earthquakes cause displacement of the sea floor and generate tsunamis, which acts as another threat to Taiwan (Ando et al, 2015;Cheng et al, 2016). People cannot stop the occurrence of natural hazards; however, warning systems could reduce the effects of such disasters (Lin et al, 2015;Necmioglu, 2016;Smith and Juria, 2019;Rahayu et al, 2020). A coastal ocean monitoring network was established in 1998 in Taiwanese waters to provide real-time oceanographic data for disaster mitigation applications (Doong et al, 2007;Doong et al, 2012;Chen, 2019).…”