Abstract
On July 12th, 1977, waves 5 m high hit the harbour of Gioia Tauro, provoking relevant damages on facilities and infrastructures, but fortunately no casualties. The source was supposed to be a submarine mass failure, ranging 5 million m3 and occurring in very shallow water at the heads of a canyon just in front of the port. The sliding mass cut a cable at 600 m depth, meaning that it travelled more than 15 km far from the source. In this work we reconstruct the hypothesized mass failure, compute the slide dynamics and simulate the generated tsunami through numerical modelling. The results obtained fit well with the observations, strengthening the hypothesis of such a landslide as the source for the 1977 tsunami. This event can be considered as paradigmatic of a category of coastal hazards: small submarine landslides occurring close to populated coasts may pose considerable risk, even if only at a local scale.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Assier-Rzadkiewicz S, Heinrich P, Sabatier PC, Savoye B, Bourillet JF (2000) Numerical modelling of a landslide-generated tsunami: the 1979 nice event. Pure Appl Geophys 157:1707–1727
Bressan L, Zaniboni F, Tinti S (2013) Calibration of a real-time tsunami detection algorithm for sites with no instrumental tsunami records: application to stations in eastern Sicily Italy. Nat Hazards Earth Syst Sci Discuss 1:2455–2493
Camerlenghi A, Urgeles R, Fantoni L (2010) A database on submarine landslides. Submarine mass movements and their consequences. In: Mosher DC et al. (eds) Advances in natural and technological hazards research, Vol 28, © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2010. 10.1007/978-90-481-3071-9_41
Colantoni P, Gennesseaux M, Vanney JR, Ulzega A, Melegari G, Trombetta A (1992) Processi dinamici del canyon sottomarino di Gioia Tauro (Mare Tirreno). Giornale di Geologia 54:199–213 (in Italian)
Lo Iacono C, Gràcia E, Zaniboni F, Pagnoni G, Tinti S, Bartolomé R, Masson D, Wynn R, Lourenço N, Pinto de Abreu M, Dañobeitia JJ, Zitellini N (2012) Large and deep slope failures in the Gorringe Bank. Evidence for landslide-generated tsunamis along the SW Iberian Margin. Geology 40:931–934. doi:10.1130/G33446.1
Papadopoulos GA, Daskalaki E, Fokaefs A (2007) Tsunamis generated by coastal and submarine landslides in the Mediterranean Sea. In: Lykousis V, Sakellariou D, Locat J (eds) Submarine mass movements and their consequences. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 415–422
Sahal A, Lemahieu A (2011) The 1979 Nice airport tsunami: mapping of the flood in Antibes. Nat Hazards 56:833–840. doi:10.1007/s11069-010-9594-6
Tinti S, Bortolucci E, Vannini C (1997) A block-based theoretical model suited to gravitational sliding. Nat Hazards 16:1–28
Tinti S, Chiocci FL, Zaniboni F, Pagnoni G, de Alteriis G (2011) Numerical simulation of the tsunami generated by a past catastrophic landslide on the volcanic island of Ischia, Italy. Marine Geophys Res 32(1):287–297. doi:10.1007/s11001-010-9109-6
Tonini R, Armigliato A, Pagnoni G, Zaniboni F, Tinti S (2011) Tsunami hazard for the city of Catania, eastern Sicily, Italy, assessed by means of Worst-case Credible Tsunami Scenario Analysis (WCTSA). Nat Hazards Earth Syst Sci 11(1217–1232):2011. doi:10.5194/nhess-11-1217-2011
Zaniboni F, Pagnoni G, Tinti S, Della SM, Fredi P, Marotta E, Orsi G (2013) The potential failure of Monte Nuovo at Ischia Island (Southern Italy): numerical assessment of a likely induced tsunami and its effects on a densely inhabited area. Bull Volcanol 75:763. doi:10.1007/s00445-013-0763-9
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Zaniboni, F., Armigliato, A., Elsen, K., Pagnoni, G., Tinti, S. (2014).
The 1977 Gioia Tauro Harbour (South Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy) Landslide-Tsunami: Numerical Simulation.
In: Sassa, K., Canuti, P., Yin, Y. (eds) Landslide Science for a Safer Geoenvironment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04996-0_90
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04996-0_90
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-04995-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-04996-0
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)