Tsunami Vulnerability Evaluation for a Small Ancient Village on Eastern Sicily Coast

Abstract

The Ionian sea is prone to tsunamis due to its proximity to the Calabrian subduction zone, which is one of the major tsunamigenic areas of the Mediterranean. The tsunami disaster risk is, nowadays, significantly higher due to the increased exposure of buildings as a result of the economic and touristic growth of the Mediterranean coastal areas. This study focuses on Marzamemi, a small village in the western coast of Sicily, since its morphology and human presence amplify the need to assess its buildings’ vulnerability. The main objective of this research is to quantify the building vulnerability to tsunami hazards using a physical and realistic tsunami scenario. For this purpose, the relative vulnerability index of the buildings in Marzamemi was calculated by means of an improved Papathoma Tsunami Vulnerability Assessment (PTVA) model. The presented approach has three main improvements: (a) a probabilistic tsunami scenario was used; (b) a realistic signal of water surface linked with a specific focal mechanism was adopted; (c) a tsunami wave was propagated from offshore to nearshore using a nonlinear numerical model. The good results of the proposed methodology make it very useful for coastal risk planning conducted by decision makers and stakeholders.