The Last Mile Project as an example of Urban resilience to Near Shore Tsunami: the Kos example

During the two recent Tsunami events in the Aegean Sea (12^th June 2017, Mw 6.3 and 20^th July 2017, Mw 6.6) there was no alert to the population that in fact did not correctly react to the consequent Tsunami events, remaining in the area, taking images and videos, walking inside the tsunami waves. The alert message generated by the Tsunami Service Providers of the area was issued after the first wave was already on land

The European Commission decided to fund this project, aimed at implementing a local Tsunami Alerting System based on several different devices that connected together can provide a reliable alerting. Thanks to that the urban resilience to this type of events is highly enhanced and it can be used for other types of natural disasters.

The municipalities mostly affected were chosen as a starting point for this activity: Kos in Greece and Bodrum in Turkey. The paper reports the design, the planning and the expected results of a large exercise, involving the local population of the city of Kos,that will be performed in the fall 2019.

This system does not replace the national system, but it rather complements it. At the beginning of the event it acts as an independent Early Warning System, disconnected from the national system; however, later on it becomes part of it, receiving and disseminating to the population eventual additional messages coming from the national warning system.

The reference city considered in this case is Kos, the main city of the Kos Island, Greece, in the East Aegean Sea. The overall system is composed of a number of different devices, all connected together with a local and internet network: Seismic accelerometers (2) Electronic Panel Boards (2) Sea level Sensors (2) Long-range Siren (1)

As the signal from both the earthquake sensors is received, an alerting message is sent out to all the system components. When the Tsunami wave is generated, it is measured by the sea level measurement devices (IDSL, Inexpensive Device for Sea Level Measurements). The electronic board panels will change the message, indicating that a tsunami was confirmed. Therefore, the system has a dual use: as a local Early Warning System for local events, too fast to be detected in time by the normal alerting chain, and as a local alert broadcasting system, in case the Civil Protection alert arrives before or in absence of a local triggering mechanism.