An essential part of responsiveness
The Lisbon Metropolitan Area, in cooperation with the municipalities of Lisbon and Cascais, is coordinating the implementation of an integrated tsunami warning and alert system in the Tagus Estuary, within the scope of the Operational Program for Sustainability and Efficiency in the Use of Resources (POSEUR).
The system, based on audible warning devices, digital information and interactive panels, signs for evacuation routes and meeting points and awareness-raising actions, aims to strengthen the national tsunami warning program and develop an efficient and modern process for warning the population of a phenomenon with minimal predictability and whose impact can be catastrophic, especially in coastal urban areas and bathing areas.
This system's mission is to alert the population to the possible occurrence of a tsunami - a risk that hangs over the estuarine area and the ocean front of the Lisbon metropolitan area - and, at the same time, to develop tools that help with the efficient management of a possible evacuation.
The sound warning devices (sirens), installed in Lisbon (Praça do Império in Belém and Ribeira das Naus) and Cascais (Teatro Gil Vicente, Praia da Azarujinha and Estoril promenade), are complemented by four digital information panels and two control centers.
In addition to the installation of this equipment, training will be given on how to interpret sound alerts and awareness-raising measures will be taken on how this process works, using models to simulate the tsunami phenomenon. Simulation exercises will also be carried out from time to time to test the effectiveness of the whole system.
The implementation of this system is therefore an essential part of the modernization and response capacity of civil protection in the face of an extreme phenomenon such as the occurrence of tsunamis, and is characterized as a pilot project of metropolitan relevance due to its potential for replication in other municipal territories associated with the potential risk of tsunami occurrence, which involves the estuaries and ocean front of the Lisbon metropolitan area.