Alexandria's Sea-Level Gauges and the Tsunami-Ready Chain

🤖 AI-generated summary of the sources below · 🔎 Last verified 2026-08-06

This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.

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Four Egyptian stations appear in UNESCO-IOC's global sea-level monitoring facility and all four are in Alexandria, contributed by the National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries with the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. Two are radar gauges sampling every ten seconds and were still transmitting on 6 August 2026; the other two last sent data in November 2023 and March 2025. The first of them was a low-cost JRC device installed in the port in June 2018. On 25 May 2024 the governorate, NIOF and the Beach Protection Authority met the twelve Tsunami Ready indicators — evacuation maps, a response plan, exercises — the first such recognition in Egypt and in Africa.

Live 📅 since 2018

Outcome🔄 Ongoing

Evidence• No measured figure

Run byNational Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries (NIOF), with the EC Joint Research Centre; Alexandria Governorate for the preparedness chain

Scale🏙️ City-wide

FundingEC Joint Research Centre for the sea-level device; CoastWAVE project funded by the EU's DG ECHO for the Tsunami Ready work

🎓 Lesson

A warning chain can be certified without a single automatic actuator, and Alexandria's is. The gauges feed a Mediterranean warning system and a governorate operations room; what happens next is a human decision. The breakwaters going up along the Corniche and around the Qaitbay citadel carry no instruments at all, and no Egyptian body publishes an Alexandria subsidence series — the millimetres-per-year figures in circulation come from academic satellite studies, not from anything the city operates.

🌱 Environment Sensors & IoT Flood resilience Water Safety & security

Sources

↗ UNESCO-IOC Sea Level Station Monitoring Facility — station alex2 (operator metadata)Station metadata lists 'Joint Research Centre (Europe)' as local contact and 'National Institute of Oceanographic and Fisheries (Egypt)' as other contact; sensor type radar, sampling interval 0.16667 minutes (10 s), status Operational, 31.2124 N / 29.8849 E.

↗ UNESCO-IOC Sea Level Station Monitoring Facility — Egypt station listRetrieved 6 August 2026: exactly four Egyptian stations, all Alexandria — alex (last data 2025-03-10 13:36), alex1 (2023-11-26 02:43), alex2 (2026-08-06 09:37), alex3 (2026-08-06 09:38). This is the basis for both the 'all four are in Alexandria' claim and the 'two have gone silent' claim.

↗ Pérez Gómez et al., Ocean Science 18, 997–1053 (peer-reviewed)Verbatim: 'In June 2018, in collaboration with the JRC, the National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries (NIOF) deployed an IDSL station in the port of Alexandria.' Also: 'Six tide gauges were operational along the Egyptian Mediterranean coast … Port Said, Burullus's new harbour, Abu-Qir Bay, Alexandria Western Harbour, Sidi Abdel-Rahman, and Mersa Matrouh', with Alexandria Western Harbour the longest record at 30 years.

↗ UNESCO-IOC Tsunami Programme — Tsunami Ready community page, AlexandriaConfirms the recognition and hosts the community's documents: evacuation maps, tsunami information resources, emergency response plans and exercise records.

↗ IOC-UNESCO announcement (primary; returned HTTP 503 to automated retrieval)Title alone carries the claim: 'Egypt and Africa's first UNESCO-IOC Tsunami Ready Community'. The body could not be read from the sandbox; the detail below is taken from the syndicated republication.

↗ Devdiscourse (syndication of the IOC announcement)Ceremony 25 May 2024 at the Office of the Governor of Alexandria; twelve indicators met; partners Alexandria Governorate, NIOF and the Beach Protection Authority; delivered under the CoastWAVE project funded by DG ECHO.

Continue exploring

Compare this project

🇯🇵 Tsunami-Alert Automatic Tide Gate Closure · Osaka The two ends of coastal instrumentation: Osaka's gates close themselves on a warning, Alexandria's gauges report to people who then decide. 🇩🇰 Copenhagen Bathing Water Forecast & Overflow Warning System · Copenhagen Both turn coastal measurement into a public warning and stop there — the reading informs, it does not actuate. 🇵🇭 EFCOS: Metro Manila's Flood Telemetry and Floodway Gates · Manila Working gauges in cities where the defences around them are the contested part, not the instruments.

Explore the wider context

📟 A Reading Is Not a Decision 📡 Sensors & IoT guide 🏙️ Alexandria city profile 🌱 Environment projects 📖 Flood early-warning system 📖 Automated speed enforcement (speed cameras)📖 Non-revenue water (NRW)

📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Alexandria's Sea-Level Gauges and the Tsunami-Ready Chain” — Alexandria, Egypt. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/alexandria-sea-level-stations/ (last verified 2026-08-06). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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