As part of the Tsunami Inundation Maps project (CITSU), the Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service of the Chilean Navy (SHOA) made available information related to the occurrence of tsunamis on the Chilean coast. SHOA, which is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the national tsunami warning system, established the CITSU project in 1977 to define probable flood levels for the main urban areas and ports along the coast in the case of approaching tsunamis. As a result of the CITSU project, more than thirty maps have been produced since its launch.
One of the main objectives of these maps is to display the impact of tsunamis to support local authorities who are in charge of urban planning and to develop evacuation plans for the protection of the population. The availability of such information allows different agencies and public bodies to improve their decision-making process and thus to prevent the loss of human lives and high costs of material resources in the case of tsunami-related floods.
New maps of coastal floods, which are created before the occurrence of tsunamis, can be directly downloaded from the website of Chile’s Platform for Geospatial Data (IDE), available here.
