Tsunami Warning and Emergency Response, Samoa, June 2017

Tsunami Warning and Emergency Response Using the PTWC Enhanced Products and the Tsunami Coastal Assessment Tool (TsuCAT) for Tsunami Hazard Assessment and Threat Decision-Making

Apia, Samoa
16, 19, 20 June 2017

In 2014, the PTWC implemented Enhanced Products for the PTWS that now include wave amplitude forecasts in both text and graphical formats, and that require each country to explicitly assign Warning / Watch status in their own messages to their coasts. Through March 2017 using its new criteria and products, PTWC response to 17 Threat Message events - four earthquakes measured Mw ≥ 7.9 and 12 were Local Tsunami Threats.

In 2017, to assist countries in assessing their tsunami hazard, developing exercise scenarios, and improving their response planning and warning decision-making, NOAA and the ITIC developed and distributed its Tsunami Coastal Hazard Assessment Tool (TsuCAT). TsuCAT is an offline tool that provides access to a Pacific database of tsunami modeling results from NOAA’s precomputed catalog of sources, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) historical tsunami sources, and the U.S. Geological Survey earthquake archive.

This training targets National Tsunami Warning Center and Tsunami Emergency Response and/or Emergency Operations Center staff.

 Informational Documents