The Civil Protection Department (CPD) will be taking part in a Tsunami Warning Systems Exercise involving several countries in the Northeast Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
The exercise will be held tomorrow morning.
The Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Tsunami Early Warning and Mitigation System in the North-eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean and connected seas (ICG/NEAMTWS) was formed in response to the tragic tsunami of December 26, 2004, in which over 250,000 lives were lost around the Indian Ocean region.
A number of Tsunami Warning Centres (NTWCs) were established in a number of countries in September.
Tomorrow's exercise will assess the national and local warning dissemination and response mechanisms.
The Mediterranean Sea is historically a seismically active with large earthquakes having taken place in Greece, Italy, and Turkey.
An earthquake 1,647 years ago near Crete causing several meters of uplift in western Crete. The earthquake caused a devastating tsunami that impacted the south coast of Crete and the northern coast of Egypt, particularly in Alexandria. There is also evidence that tsunami waves also traveled east towards Cyprus, west towards Malta, Sicily, and Libya and north towards the Ionian and Adriatic Sea.
Malta is in the process of establishing its National Tsunami Warning Centre and has so far never participated in a tsunami exercise.
In tomorrow's exercise, after receiving the tsunami messages from Centre d' Alerte aux Tsunamis, France, a table-top exercise will be carried out through telecommunication test scenarios between the Operation Room of the CPD Headquarters and the Police Central Operations Room for end-to-end early warning.
The exercise will be based on a scenario of an earthquake in the Western Mediterranean which will generate waves which impact Algeria around Collo and the nearby coasts, the Balearic Islands and the north-eastern coasts of Spain and the southern and western coasts of Sardinia, the western coasts of Tunisia, the French Gulf of Lion and French Riviera, Monaco and Gulf of Genova. The tsunami arrival time to the Maltese Islands in this simulated earthquake scenario will be about two hours with very low impacts.