Corrections · 2
Disaster prevention
First I searched for an actual plan of my city, with topographical information on the ground elevation. I established a correspondence between the topographical elevation and sea levels, considering the tides. I found that the maximum sea level, only considering astronomical tide, is 1.7 m above zero elevation*.The next step was to draw a city plan with the areas under the maximum sea level with contour lines in steps of 5 metres in elevation, e.g. 6.7, 11.7 and 16.7 m. These could be potential risk areas.
Fortunately my house is not in any of the risk areas but the tsunami could appear when visiting downtown, where there are various streets in risk areas.
There are no historical evidences of large tsunamis in my region, but in my country, a tsunami took place 250 years ago, 1000 km distant from my town. A recent government guideline asserts that there is a potential risk of a tsunami with a sea elevation of two metres maximum. The time of arrival would be one hour fifteen minutes and the maximum high would reach the coast in one hour fifty two minutes. Due to the lack of recent seismic activity, they hardly could make a statistical analysis of the phenomenon and they estimated the maximum possible surface displacement without reference to a return period.
After this I established that a 5.7 m elevation could be a good selection for the determination of risk areas. This height could be reached for the water, considering astronomical and barometrical tide, inundation height, maximum run-up and wind waves, which are large in my region (up to 12m of significant wave height in a recent storm).
Firstly, it would be easy to plan evacuation routes to the higher parts of the city, classified as Category A evacuation points. Secondly, as in these risk areas are plenty of tall buildings with concrete structures, the best thing is to select them as category B evacuation facilities. Finally a good campaign of information and an alert protocol would be necessary to achieving this target.
*zero elevation = sea level?
very well written!
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