Historical Tsunami Database for the Mediterranean, 1628 B.C - 2000

The Historical Tsunami Database (HTDB) Mediterranean was established and is being maintained by the Novosibirsk Tsunami Laboratory (NTL) of the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics ICM&MG, Siberian Division of Russian Academy of Sciences since 1991. The project is supported by the Russian Foundation of Basic Research (grants 93-05-14499 and 95-07-19335) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (contracts SC/RP 207.518.4 and SC/RP 207.566.6).

Following the tsunami database structure proposed by the NGDC (Boulder, Colorado), the tsunami database supported by the NTL consists of the two main parts parametric source data (event data) and observed or measured run-up heights (run-up data). The first part contains the basic set of source parameters and some integrated data on tsunami manifestation for historical tsunamigenic events.

A set of parameters includes the full date (Year, Mo, Da) and time (Hr, Mn, Sec) of an event, position of its source (Lat,? Long), the source depth Dep, the basic set of source magnitudes (mb, Ms, Mw, Mt), tsunami intensity I (on the Soloviev-Imamura scale), tsunami magnitude m (on the Imamira-Iida scale), the maximum observed run-up value Hmax, the total number of available run-up and tide-gauge measurements N, damage code D, the number of reported fatalities due to an event F, a cause of the tsunami C, validity of an event V, warning status WS (where available), tsunamigenic region code TR, the basic reference BR and a brief description of the source region.

The second part of the database contains coastal run-up observations and tide-gauge measurements of wave heights. For each wave height record, a set of displayed parameters includes the 3-level name of the site (Region name, Area name and Site name), its geographical coordinates (Lat, Long), the type of measurement T (R - run-up, T - tide-gauge) and the observed run-up height or the double amplitude H (in meters), distance of horizontal flooding and the period of the dominant wave (because of their scarcity the last two parameters are nor presented in the Web-version of the database).

For the Mediterranean regions, the run-up data files were newly created using published catalogs and primary publications.

The database can be accessed online at: "http://tsun.sscc.ru/htdbmed/"