Tsunami Society International (TSI) is an international professional society for scientists around the world who study all aspects of tsunami hazards. The Society’s mandate is to disseminate knowledge about tsunamis to scientists, officials, the media and the public, and to promote the awareness and mitigation of tsunami hazards through the sponsorship of workshops, meetings and symposia, and through our professional “Science of Tsunami Hazards” (STH) journal, the Society’s web pages and other venues. Also, TSI provides a focus for discussion and interactions among its members, government agencies and the public – throughout the world.
The Society’s STH journal is now in its 31st year of continuous publication since 1982. STH is peer-reviewed and the only journal in the world dealing exclusively with tsunami-related research - combining high qualitative and quantitative standards of content, as well as international diversity of authorship and citations. Thus, STH is well regarded for its uniqueness and depth of coverage and enjoys worldwide popularity. Published quarterly on a regular basis, the STH journal is the most appropriate resource for worldwide readership of scientific papers on tsunami hazards and for anyone working on tsunami-related research projects.
Ongoing Journal Work: “Science of Tsunami Hazards” (STH).
STH is a Certified, OPEN ACCESS Journal included in the prestigious international academic journal database DOAJ maintained by the University of Lund in Sweden with the support of the European Union. “SCIENCE OF TSUNAMI HAZARDS” is also preserved and archived at the National Library, The Hague, Netherlands and at the U.S. Library of Congress, in Washington D.C., USA. Older issues are also archived at the US Los Alamos Laboratory Library. Furthermore, STH is included in EBSCO and ELSEVIER Publishing databases, which give the journal additional global exposure and readership in the databases of 90% of the academic institutions worldwide, including nation-wide access to databases in more than 70 countries.
In addition to the publication of four issues of the “Science of Tsunami Hazards” per year, TSI participates with DOAJ, the University of Lund in Sweden, the European Library at the Hague and European research libraries to help digitize all past articles in “SCIENCE OF TSUNAMI HAZARDS”, so they can be searchable online with the submission of metadata. We spend a great deal of time in this effort so that we can increase, even more, the visibility and usage of past and recent articles included in our Journal.
All past publications of the journal have been archived and we continue the processing and the systematic compressing of individual files to even smaller sizes to facilitate faster browsing and downloading. We are constantly optimizing our electronic database, improving the ranking of our website and registering the STH journal with prestigious databases for listing - so as to meet the increased, international scientific demands for tsunami data (which became significantly greater since the 2004 Indian Ocean, the 2010 Chilean, the 2011 Japan, the 2012 Canada and the 2013 Solomon Island tsunamis).
2012 Conferences and Symposia.
Tsunami Symposium In Ecuador
In addition to the publication of the journal and our ongoing Journal endeavors, during June of 2012, Tsunami Society International (TSI) co-sponsored and provided training at a Tsunami Symposium entitled “Simposio-Taller Internacional “Tsunamis, Costas Ecuatorianas y Galapagueñas 2012, heldat the Instituto Oceanografico de la Armada (INOCAR) headquarters in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The training was sponsored by the Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, Sección Nacional Ecuador and - in addition to TSI – by the Polytechnic School of the Army (ESPE), INOCAR, the National Secretariat of Risks (SNGR), the Research Center for Geophysical Research of the State University of Santa Elena (UPSE) and by several national and international institutions and universities in the region.
Particular emphasis at this Symposium was placed on the impact of tsunamis in Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands from South America earthquakes and from far-field sources. The training provided by TSI included some of the appropriate guidelines and methodology needed for the evaluation of the tsunami risk in terms of frequency of occurrence, severity of impact, design adequacy of important coastal structures and, finally, in terms of preparedness and planning for hazard mitigation. Special attention was given to the potential for tsunami generation along the Colombia/Ecuador subduction margin and the Dolores-Guayaquil Mega-thrust. Subsequent to the training, a visit was made to the INOCAR Tsunami Station at Puerto Ayora, on the Island of Santa Cruz in the Galapagos.
Global Risk Forum, Davos, Switzerland
TSI co-sponsored the Global Risk Forum in Davos, Switzerland during August, 2012, peer-reviewing submitted papers within TSI’s scope (s) of expertise.
Fifth International Tsunami Symposium, Ispra, Italy
From September 1st-3rd, TSI held in conjunction with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy, a very successful 5th International Tsunami Symposium. Ispra is a small town on the eastern shore of Lake Maggiore, very close to Milan, in the province of Varese (Lombardy, northern Italy). The Symposium was hosted by Dr. Delilah Al Khudhairy, the Director of the Global Security and Crisis Management Unit of EC-JRC and by Dr. Alessandro Annunciato, both providing valuable logistical support that contributed to the Symposium’s success. The 3-day Tsunami Symposium was held at the large Amphitheatre of EC-JRC. In view of the great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, emphasis in the Symposium program was given to the destruction of coastal areas on the Island of Honshu in Japan and to safety issues pertaining to nuclear power plants to avoid what happened at the Fukushima Daichi plant.
5th Tsunami Symposium participants had the opportunity to visit the European Crisis Management Laboratory at the EC-JRC - a state-of-the-art facility - and observe in real-time the ongoing investigation of a major and potentially tsunamigenic earthquake in Costa Rica - which occurred at the conclusion of the third day’s session. The Symposium was also highlighted by a banquet and an awards ceremony held at the Atlantis Resort in Arona, a wonderful site on the other side of Lake Maggiore.
Dr. Charles L. Mader was presented with the Tsunami Society International’s life-long award for his research work at the U.S. Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, his close co-operation on tsunami research with scientists at the University of Hawaii, for his publication of books on "Numerical Modeling of Detonations" and the two editions of "Numerical Modeling of Water Waves"; the latter two books pertaining on what is being done with state-of-the-art, high-performance computers which allow for rapid solution of highly complex Navier-Stokes and other equations that describe wave generation, wave energy propagation, as well as the adaptation of new codes that can result in accurate simulations of waves generated from a variety of source mechanisms - whether earthquakes, landslides, explosions, or the impact of asteroids.
Dr. Alessandro Annunziato, of EC-JRC was presented the award of Tsunami Society International for his work on Nuclear Engineering and more specifically on the Design Basis Accident Analysis of reactors and Fuel Coolant Interaction in case of Severe Accidents, as well as his involvement at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC) in Ispra, Italy, in the development of Crisis Management Technologies and Tools and all the automatic procedures for the analysis of Tsunamis in real time that is currently in use at the Crisis Room of EC-JRC.
Professor Barbara Thielen-Willige was presented with the award of Tsunami Society International for her work at Berlin University of Technology, Institute of Applied Geosciences and at the Bureau of Applied Geoscientific Remote Sensing in Germany, in the fields of GeoInformation Systems (GIS) and the integrated geomorphologic and geologic evaluation of satellite imageries and aerial photographs. More specifically, for her use of GIS integrated geo-scientific evaluation of remote sensing data and the use of weighted overlay methods in ArcGIS for the detection of areas susceptible to tsunami flooding due to their morphometric properties.
Professor Tomoya Shibayama was presented with the award of Tsunami Society International for his outstanding research work in Civil, Environmental and Coastal Engineering at Waseda University in Tokyo and as Director of the Composed Crisis Institute, for his thorough evaluation of the 2011 Tohoku tsunami disaster with emphasis on future coastal protection that will help mitigate the impact of tsunamis in Japan.
Professor Dan Palermo was presented with the award of Tsunami Society International for his engineering research work at the University of Ottawa on tsunami loads on infrastructure facilities and on experimental and numerical modeling of tsunami-induced hydrodynamic forces on structures.
Professor Efim Pelinovsky was presented with the award of Tsunami Society International for his research work on fluid dynamics with emphasis on tsunamis, at the Nizhny Novgorod State University, the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novgorod, as well for his research at the State Technical University and at the Higher School of Economics.
