Tsunami Hazard studies in West Indies conducted by BRGM
Abstract
We briefly present here tsunami studies carried out by BRGM in the West Indies. These works concern: - the establishment of a tsunami historical database that have hit French coasts (Lambert and Terrier, 2011). This database, accessible on the web (www.tsunamis.fr), is based on original documentary source to prevent errors existing in most tsunami catalogues (unit conversion problems, false tsunamis, etc...) - the numerical modeling of historical tsunamis of Montagne Pelé 1902 and Montserrat 2003 (Poisson and Pedreros 2010) - and a preliminary evaluation of the exposure of the Guadeloupe and Martinique coasts to tsunamis (Pedreros, Terrier and Poisson 2007) following three main steps: i) characterization of tsunamigenic sources (seismic and volcanic), ii) definition of 8 probable maximum tsunamis (PMT) and iii) numerical simulation of the generation and propagation of these PMT close the coastline (10 m depth) with a best grid resolution of 100 m. We will also introduce the first results of the inundation calculation at a very high spatial resolution (grid size of 1 to 5 m) obtained in others studies like ALDES (Le Roy, Pedreros and Monfort, 2011) to discuss of: lidar processing data, role of the land use and the difference of the inundation simulations in presence or not of buildings and structures.