Background

The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO and the JRC have collaborated on many aspects in the North-Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean (NEAM) region, including the preparation of tsunami scenarios, provision of operational tsunami early warning software to Tsunami Service Providers, the establishment and management of inexpensive sea-level devices network, and recently initiatives towards community preparedness and response in the Mediterranean region through the Tsunami Last Mile Projects in Greece, Turkey and Malta. One of the most recent examples of such collaboration is through the IOC-UNESCO DG-ECHO Project “CoastWAVE”, which was initiated in September 2021. The project aims to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable coastal communities in the North-East Atlantic, Mediterranean and its connected seas (NEAM) region to tsunamis and other sea level-related hazards.   

End-to-End Warning and Response Steps during a tsunami

In particular, the collaboration includes building tsunami resilience at the local level and ensuring the longer-term sustainability of the Inexpensive Device for Sea Level (IDSL) network to provide early warning of rapid onset sea level-related hazards in selected NEAMTWS countries.

IOC-UNESCO and JRC of the European Commission are co-organising a workshop on the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) Planning and Implementation for Tsunami Response in NEAM region  from 5 to 6 October 2022 at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy.

Several workshops and trainings have been carried out over the years by IOC UNESCO and partners in the Pacific, Caribbean and Indian Ocean to support the development of tsunami Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). This workshop will set a benchmark for tsunami SOP development in NEAM region in the context of the CoastWAVE project by sharing experiences and lessons learned from the other ICG / tsunami regions.

Key Objectives of the Workshop

The workshop will:

1) review current SOPs and governing frameworks/regulations, as well as identify gaps and possible challenging on establishing tsunami SOP Plans at national and local levels;

2) identify components and content of Tsunami response Plan (TRP);

3) introduce SOP Standards and Guidelines MG 76 and MG 82 of IOC-UNESCO;

4) guide partners on the SOP Preparation Workflow for stakeholders and communities;

5) develop and integrate the SOPs between stakeholders;

6) share experiences, examples, lessons learned and references for TRPs and SOPs from other regions (Indian Ocean and Caribbean);

At the end of this workshop, participants will have the knowledge and capacity to advance the development of an SOP for tsunami in respective country.

Links

Workshop concept agenda