Caribbean tsunamis - Regional exposure and local risk assessment

Funded by the Norwegian Government, NGI and the University of the West Indies (UWI) with support from the Coastal Zone Management Unit Barbados (CZMU) have completed a two years capacity building program on natural disasters mitigation in the Caribbean, where the following is undertaken: i) preparation of regional tsunami hazard and exposure maps to identify the region’s natural disaster hot spot areas; and ii) implementation of a tsunami risk assessment demonstration project in close cooperation with the local authorities. The selected site for the demonstration project is Bridgetown, Barbados. Studies of both seismic and non-seismic tsunamigenic sources are included to provide examples of various kinds of sources with a regional distribution. Special attention is paid to the coupling between the numerical models for dispersive wave propagation and run-up models for nonlinear wave inundation. In the tsunami risk assessment demonstration project, local vulnerability and mortality risk maps are produced. The maps are based on evaluations of the tsunami inundation distance and a detailed survey of the populational pattern, buildings, and infrastructure in Bridgetown.