Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tsunamis: Tectonic Hazards and the Built Environment in Southern Europe

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Tsunamis are often underestimated in the Mediterranean and parts of Europe. In the Lisbon earthquake and tsunami in 1755 (due to the Azores - Gibraltar conversion fault) and the Calabria earthquake in 1783, history and present (about risk assumption) are important. Take the 1908 Mexican earthquake and tsunami. Tsunami kills over 123,000 people in Sicily and Calabria and is one of the most deadly natural disasters in modern Europe. Examples of tsunamis affecting landslides and the British Isles in the Norwegian Sea include not only waves due to earthquakes but mainly landslides and weather tsunamis.

If you are trying to evaluate the danger of a tsunami at a specific location on the planet, you need to first understand how the tsunami is occurring. Earthquakes and volcanoes have created the majority of the tsunami, and plate tectonics explains the causes of earthquakes and volcanoes. Therefore, we start with the review of the simplest plate construction in the world. Plate tectonics is a magnificent unified theory of earth science, but in reality it is not so old. In fact, since a college freshmen consultant wrote a benchmark paper outlining the mathematical model of the plate structure, in a sense I was only a generation of "generations" removed from the era before plate manufacture. ** Shameless plug alarm **: Please choose EARTH 520 to gain a deeper understanding of the history of plate structure theory

Natural disaster: What is a natural disaster? Natural disasters are natural events that pose a danger to human life and property. "Natural disaster" is a generic term for events such as volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Types of natural disasters include avalanches, earthquakes, floods, forest fires, hurricanes / typhoons / cyclones, landslides, thunderstorms / blizzards / ice storms, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanoes and so on. Below is a brief explanation of these natural disasters. Many of these natural disasters are studied in more detail in the follow-up course of this module.