Numerical Simulation of a Tsunami Propagation Considering the Regional Characteristic

Abstract

The tsunami, the representative natural hazard, causes tremendous damage to national economy as well as casualties. For example, the South Asia Tsunami occurred on December 26, 2004 killed approximately 300,000 people and deprived property of 10billion USD. So, it is very important to predict a behavior of a tsunami which depends on a water depth variation and a regional characteristic. The former determines the direction of tsunami propagation and the latter may cause wave reflection and resonance. Therefore, in this study, we investigate an effect of these phenomena. Imwon port located at the eastern coast of the Korean peninsula was damaged relatively strongly by the Central East Sea Tsunami because of a water depth variation which makes the wave concentration on this port. Pohang port is located at a caved point of the eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula, it may have a risk that there are some increases of wave heights by wave reflection and resonance effect. To simulate tsunami propagation, the dispersion-correction scheme which is modified to consider the dispersion effect is used. The modified scheme has an advantage of using constant spatial grid and time step sizes even in real topography. In numerical model, a staggered grid system is used. A total domain of the model is divided several sub-regions and dynamic linking technique is used to connect these.