It may be a landlocked country, but Switzerland has some of the biggest lakes in Western Europe, and tsunamis have occurred in Swiss waters the past.
Now researchers want to launch a two-million-franc research project to investigate how likely it is that the country could be struck by a tsunami again, reported the Luzerner Zeitung on Wednesday.
Led by the University of Bern, the Centre for marine environmental sciences in Bremen, ETH Zurich – which includes the Swiss seismology service – and the Swiss environment office, the study will examine the sediments on the bottom of Lake Lucerne over a 22 month period.
They are aiming to place the first probe on the lake floor by the end of the year, with a further eight probes to follow next year.
The data obtained will be fed into a computer simulation giving scientists an idea of how possible a tidal wave is and its potential magnitude.
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