The NEAM-COMMITMENT EU project aiming to support improved tsunami risk management and planning in the NEAM region

NEAM-COMMITMENT is a two-year project funded by the European Commission’s DG-ECHO, starting in 2025. We will present an overview of the project, its expected outcomes, and its synergies with previous/ongoing projects and initiatives.

The project aims to support improved tsunami risk management and planning in the North-Eastern Atlantic, Mediterranean and connected seas (NEAM) region. The project endeavors to primarily contribute to two key components of tsunami risk governance: (1) capacity building through tsunami hazard assessment and mapping at the national scale, and (2) improved tsunami evacuation planning at the local level through a novel multi-hazard approach. The project capitalizes on past and ongoing projects and initiatives, e.g., TSUMAPS-NEAM, CoastWAVE, EPOS TCS Tsunami and Global Tsunami Model, among others, while investing in cross-border knowledge-sharing through an extensive scientific and emergency management partnership, with 13 partner institutions from four NEAM countries. This will strengthen the cooperation among NEAM Member States and the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM), to ultimately enhance tsunami preparedness for effective response within the framework of the NEAM Tsunami Warning System coordinated by UNESCO-IOC.

The project’s first objective is to develop national tsunami inundation maps in Cyprus, Greece and Spain through a methodology previously used to produce tsunami inundation maps for evacuation planning in Italy. The tsunami inundation mapping methodology will utilize the NEAM probabilistic tsunami hazard model offshore inputs (NEAMTHM18; Basili et al., 2021, Front. Earth Sci.) to infer the national-scale inundation zones across large stretches of coastline in Cyprus, Spain, and Greece, using a GIS-based approach (Tonini et al., 2021, Front. Earth Sci.). The second objective addresses the need for a multi-hazard approach for effective tsunami evacuation management at the local level to complement existing tsunami evacuation management guidelines (e.g., UNESCO-IOC, Manuals and Guides 82). The proposed new approach focuses on multi-hazard cascading effects concerning tsunami evacuation management and will be tested in local pilot sites in Greece and Italy, considering the hazards of earthquake+tsunami and volcanic activity+tsunami in each pilot site, respectively.

The project objectives will be achieved through science-informed, participatory decision-making, enabling decision-makers to take ownership of the products and maximize implementation effectiveness. The methodological approach draws valuable experience from a recent cross-border collaboration on tsunami hazard and evacuation mapping for the city of Larnaca, Cyprus (Aguirre Ayerbe et al., 2025, EGU Abstract), implemented within the framework of the UNESCO-IOC CoastWAVE project, also funded by DG-ECHO. In addition to the products that will be developed for the four countries, open-access guidelines and tools will be developed to document the methodologies implemented for creating tsunami inundation maps at the national level and local tsunami evacuation maps considering multi-hazard cascading effects, to contribute to improved tsunami risk management and planning in the NEAM region and beyond. Finally, the release of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Services will enhance compliance with FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles for mapping products and allow support for implementing the EPOS TCS Tsunami.