From left; Denis Chang-Seng, Technical Secretary of the ICG/NEAMTWS; Alessandro Amato, INGV, newly elected Chair of the ICG/NEAMTWS; Alexander Rudloff, GFZ, Chair of the Electoral Committee, Maria Ana Baptista, University of Lisbon, Portugal, outgoing Chair of the ICG/NEAMTWS; Amr Zakaria, NIOF, Egypt, and Ignacio Aguirre Ayerbe, IHCantabria, Spain, both elected Vice-Chair of the ICG/NEAMTWS
Yesterday, the 18th session of the ICG-NEAMTWS concluded at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
Three days of intense work in which the representatives of the Tsunami Service Providers and the national competence centres of the NEAMTWS area shared the progress of their activities and planned the work and objectives that will involve the Task Teams and the four Working Groups in the coming months.
Yesterday morning, Thursday 8 February 2024, the new Chair and Co-Chair for the NEAMTWS were elected. They will lead the activities of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission for the Euro-Mediterranean Area (IOC-NEAMTWS) for the next four years, together with the UNESCO Secretariat, represented by Denis Chang-Seng.
Alessandro Amato, responsible for INGV's Tsunami Alert Centre, has been elected - by common agreement between the present offices - Chair of the IOC-NEAMTWS. Mr Amato thus takes over from Maria Ana Baptista (Portugal) who held the role for four years.
Several commitments will involve the new Chair, including the approval and implementation of the probabilistic tsunami forecast model for the tsunami estimation impact along the coasts of the Euro-Mediterranean basin (PTF). This new assessment methodology, when approved, will replace the current Decision Matrix with which tsunami warnings are currently issued on our coasts. Amato's objectives include increasing awareness of tsunami risk on the NEAM area coasts, including through the development of the UNESCO Tsunami Ready programme.
The 18th session of the ICG-NEAMTWS was preceded by the closing meeting of the CoastWave project.