Using the SPRC methodology to assess tsunami risk in Zihuatanejo, Mexico

ABSTRACT

The increase in the magnitude of natural disasters has led to the development of risk assessment methodologies to indicate risk levels in qualitative terms. Among these, the Source-Pathway-Receptor-Consequence (SPRC) methodology assesses the risk from the source of the hazard to the possible consequences. In the present work, an economic evaluation was carried out on the substantial damages directly associated with the floods generated by a 10 m high tsunami off the coast of Zihuatanejo, Mexico. This event was identified as the worst-case scenario of tsunamis associated with a 8.4 Mw earthquake. The method followed was the SPRC, with an economic evaluation, applied to street level in Zihuatanejo. The economic costs were obtained from the results of this work using a criterion to characterize the percentage of damage to various types of housing and goods associated with different levels of flooding. This work is intended as a basis for the better planning of urban development, considering possible economic damage from tsunamis. It also provides a more objective perspective for distributing funds for mitigating natural disasters, allowing aid to be directed to the areas and types of housing with greatest risk from the flooding.

KEYWORDS:

• Zihuatanejo
• tsunami
• flood hazard
• risk assessment
• SPRC methodology

Acknowledgments

This work was partially financed by Centro Mexicano de Innovación en Energía del Océano (CEMIE-Océano) funded by the CONACYT-SENER Sustentabilidad Energética, under the project FSE-2014-06-249795. The authors thank researchers who have contributed to this study through data and discussions: Edgar Mendoza Baldwin and Yandy Rodríguez Cueto. The authors thank Ito. Eri et al. (2021) for allowing us to use a figure from their article Method to extract difficult-to-evacuate areas by using tsunami evacuation simulation and numerical analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.