The 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami damaged severely most of the Gulf of Bengal’s coastal areas, but the coast of Bangladesh which stands at the edge of an extraordinarily extended continental shelf. This latter feature has been built through huge discharges of river sediments along the Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers. As a result of this enormous discharge, another interesting feature of t...

In the framework of the European SCenarios for tsunami Hazard-induced Emergencies MAnagement (SCHEMA) project (www.schemaproject.org), we empirically developed new tsunami damage functions to be used for quantifying the potential tsunami damage to buildings along European-Mediterranean coasts. Since no sufficient post-tsunami observations exist in the Mediterranean areas, we based our work on d...

The Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 26, 2004 devastated coastal ecosystems across South Asia. Along the coastal regions of South India, increased groundwater levels (GWL), largely caused by saltwater intrusion, infiltration from inundated land, and disturbance of freshwater lenses, were reported. Many agencies allocated funding for restoration and rehabilitation projects. However, to streamlin...

A moment-magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck the area off the western coast of northern Sumatra on 26 December 2004, which triggered massive tsunamis inundating the coastal areas in the countries along the Indian Ocean Rim. Various moderateto high-resolution satellite images were obtained before and after the tsunami attack and used for emergency management. High-resolution satellite (e.g. IKONOS) ...

Introduction. Although rare, tsunamis have the potential to cause considerable loss of life and injury as well as widespread damage to the natural and built environments. The objectives of this review were to describe the impact of tsunamis on human populations in terms of mortality, injury, and displacement and, to the extent possible, identify risk factors associated with these outcomes. This...

High-frequency (HF) surface wave radars provide a unique capability to detect targets far beyond the conventional microwave radar coverage but also could contribute to the development and improvement of Tsunami Early Warning Systems. The HF radar system WERA is an oceanographic radar placed at the coast and providing simultaneous wide area measurements of ocean surface current fields and sea st...

The December 26, 2004 tsunami was perhaps the most devastating tsunami in recorded history, causing over 200,000 fatalities and widespread destruction in countries bordering the Indian Ocean. It was generated by the third largest earthquake on record Mw=9.1–9.3 and was a truly global event, with significant wave action felt around the world. Many measurements of this event were made with seismo...

The Indian Ocean Tsunami (IOT) 26 December 2004 is the most devastating tsunami recorded in history causing over than 200,000 deaths and millions homeless people, uncounted property and infrastructure damaged along the coasts of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. Many lessons can be inferred for this case, one of interesting phenomena is the dispersive effect on tsunami propagati...

Following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami all roads in the affected areas in Sri Lanka were inaccessible during the immediate aftermath of the disaster either due to the damages they sustained or poor networking of roads and lack of contingency planning within the road network systems. This paper aims at proving the necessity of effective mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction during road recon...