Union(U)
Session Sub-categoryUnion
Session IDU-04
TitleInternational Efforts Supporting Global Navigation Satellite System-Enhanced Tsunami Early Warning
Short TitleGNSS Tsunami Early Warning
Main Convener NameJohn B Rundle
AffiliationUniversity of California Davis
Co-Convener 1NameKazuyoshi Nanjo
AffiliationUniversity of Shizuoka
Co-Convener 2NameEiichi Fukuyama
AffiliationKyoto University / National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience
Session LanguageE
ScopeWith little to no warning more than 230,000 lives were lost to the Great Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 26, 2004. This devastating loss of life focused the efforts of scientists, engineers and politicians to strengthen tsunami early warning systems beginning with an accurate and rapid estimate of tsunami potential. A combined network of seismic and geodetic sensors quickly emerged as an accurate, efficient, and cost effective enhancement to tsunami early warning systems for those at risk communities nearest the earthquake epicenter. In the months following the Great Indian Ocean Tsunami, geophysicists demonstrated that analysis the GPS network of the Global Geodetic Observing System could have provided warning within 15 minutes after the Sumatran earthquake if the network data were available in real time. On March 11, 2011, the Tohoku-oki earthquake and tsunami unleashed another terrible tragedy upon the Japanese people and posed great challenges to the Japanese government. The Tohoku-oki earthquake occurred off shore from the world's most advanced GPS network, the GEONET, designed and operated by The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI). The Tohoku-oki earthquake did underscore the potential and extraordinary societal value of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) to tsunami warning systems. Several retrospective studies of the Tohoku-oki earthquake deformation captured by the GEONET demonstrated that accurate tsunami inundation predictions could be provided within 5 minutes of the earthquake occurrence.

In this session, we solicit papers on topics related to the realization of such a system, including instrumentation, data collection and availability, modeling, forecasting/nowcasting, and software development, as well as capacity building and linkages to international organizations, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Presentation FormatOral and Poster presentation