Updating and Revision of the European Tsunami Catalogue

Abstract

The first catalogue of the European tsunamis was built in the frame of the EU Projects called GITEC, and GITEC-TWO. The catalogue was implemented as a FoxPro 2.5 database, and it can be fully used on PC with Windows 3.1 or with the first versions of Windows 95. In the present work, we describe the new version of the database that has been totally rebuilt within the Visual FoxPro 6.0 DBMS environment in order to make it suitable for the operating systems currently on the market (i.e. Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT, etc.). The general structure of the previous data base version is preserved. The catalogue is accessible through a main screen containing a) functional buttons to perform the basic inquiry, and browser actions, and b) parametric, and textual data concerning a specific event that can be selected by the user. The data base has been enriched by including new tsunami entries, as the result of revision of historical sources, and by adding a new category of data, namely graphical data, such as digitised tide-gauge records, photos, relevant maps, etc., that form a special section accessible from the main screen. Moreover, the auxiliary data base of the references has been updated by introducing all the contributions, such as papers, and scientific studies that have been published in the last years.