Damage to Oil Storage Tanks from the 2011 Mw 9.0 Tohoku-Oki Tsunami

Abstract

The Mw 9.0 2011 Tohoku-oki tsunami damaged 418 oil storage tanks and moved 157 of them. Using data on the severity of damage and the maximum inundation depth of the tsunami, a fragility curve representing the damage to oil storage tank plumbing is presented in this paper: P( η)= Φ ((ln η − 1.02)/0.574), where P is the damage rate, η is the maximum inundation depth in meters, and Φ is the standard normal cumulative distribution function. The existing method of predicting the movement of tanks exposed to a tsunami is validated by comparing the predicted damage with actual damage data from the 2011 tsunami. The accuracy (hit rate) is 76%.