Preface

Chapter 7 **Challenges and Opportunities for Reducing Losses to Fast-**

Ghazala Naeem, Abdullah Usman and Jamila Nawaz

**Pakistan 135**

**VI** Contents

**Arriving Tsunamis in Remote Villages Along the Coast of**

In the recent years, the world has experienced few mega-tsunamis which have caused exten‐ sive loss of life and property. The most destructive ones were in December 2004 in Sumatra, causing more than 290,000 deaths and in March 2011 in Japan, creating a nuclear accident. Because of these events, the recent advances in tsunami study have led the scientists to bet‐ ter understanding of the cause of tsunami, its propagation and most importantly, the system of warning ahead of tsunami arrival to the vulnerable coastal area. In continuation, the me‐ teorological effects, meteo-tsunami and underwater volcanic eruption as other tsunamigenic sources are also being better documented and investigated. At last, let's also mention that onshore earthquake close to coast or located at the onshore part of the subduction zone has triggered the creation of mud-volcano island offshore and onshore, for example large earth‐ quake of onshore Iran 2013 event. It is also important to mention as a pivotal point, the event of 2004 which has triggered many global initiatives such as a new tsunami detection system, more detailed coastal modeling, tsunami-compatible coastal developments and inte‐ grated approach for regional early warning system and public educations, awareness and preparedness. In these advances the environmental damage of urban communities (coastal) and ecosystems and consequently regional economic impact have been largely unattended to date, yet they may have very long-lasting effects both on environmental quality and on regional economy.

The book is divided into four sections. Section 1 covers the introduction to the topic. Section 2 which consists of two chapters provides information on tsunami propagation from the open sea to the coast and talks about coastal tsunami warning using deployed HF radar sys‐ tems in many different parts of North America and Japan. The tsunami propagation, pre‐ liminary methods for evaluating the suitability of radar sites for tsunami detection using simulated tsunami velocities and factors affecting tsunami detectability are discussed and methods for reducing the false alarms are described.

Section 3 consists of two parts covering multi-scale meteorological systems resulted in me‐ teo-tsunami (meteorological tsunami is a kind of ocean long wave with the tsunami frequen‐ cy band from several minutes to 2 hours driven by atmospheric forcing at the sea interface). The second chapter of this section provides some details and scientific information, includ‐ ing some very important case studies on tsunami generation due to a landslide or a submar‐ ine volcanic eruption.

In Section 4, occurrence and characteristics of tsunami in Sweden, using paleo-tsunami events from different parts of Scandinavia are discussed in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 discusses challenges and opportunities for reducing losses to fast-arriving tsunamis in remote villages along the coast of Pakistan coast.

As a concluding remark, one important aspect concerning the local tsunamis is the role of the earthquake effect before tsunami waves are being generated and propagated toward the coast, and also an integrated worldwide tsunami early warning system needs to be fully ac‐ counted for in the future scientific discussion.

This book is based on expert writing with the objective of providing a collection of different aspects of tsunami events from generation by different sources including non-seismic, to propagation, detection, and warning dissemination. It is strongly believed that all the infor‐ mation provided here should play an important role in tsunami risk reduction and mitiga‐ tion. The presented chapters have been peer reviewed and accepted for publication. We would like to express our gratitude to the contributing authors who have been the key factor in this achievement. Finally, we would like to specially thank the InTech publisher who ini‐ tiated this book and guided and helped the Editor for its completion.
