A Al lm ma a M Ma at te er r S St tu ud di io or ru um m --U Un ni iv ve er rs si it tà à d di i B Bo ol lo og gn na a DOTTORATO DI RICERCA ABSTRACT Tsunamis are not considered a major hazard in Central America, people are not aware of that risk and recent tsunami events recorded in the area have been forgotten. Despite this, recent studies have established that Central America is a moderately tsunamigenic zone and that is affected mainly by tsunamis triggered by earthquakes, especially at the

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... acific coast where the Middle American Trench runs parallel to the coast. The most recent event occurred on the 2 nd of September 1992 offshore the Nicaraguan coast, the run-up values measured at that time varied between 2 and 6 metres. This event has led to several studies including the compilation of a tsunami catalogue for the region, some empirical, statistical and deterministic studies. In this thesis, a statistical and deterministic analysis is followed. The statistical approach aimed to estimate the Gutenberg-Richter coefficient of the region in order to know the annual rate of occurrence of tsunamigenic earthquakes and their corresponding return period. A hybrid analysis, probabilistic and deterministic, has been use to compute the run-up distribution along the coast corresponding to a given annual rate of occurrence of a tsunamigenic earthquake. A further scenario-based analysis has been undertaken consisting in the numerical simulations of six historical earthquakes that were carried out by means of the UBO-TSUFE MODEL. ii iii