Tsunami Wave Inundation Research Articles

The damage effect on the structural capacity of school building columns due to tsunami inundation in Banda Aceh city after 16 years

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami caused catastrophic damage to buildings and infrastructure in Banda Aceh. The impact and damage depended on several factors such as the distance of the area from the coast. It was reported that in Banda Aceh, the tsunami wave inundation reached the city center and affected over a third of the population. Due to priority reasons at the time, although the structure was submerged in tsunami inundation, numerous public facilities including school buildings still in use without any proper repair. This study aims to determine the effect of column damage due to the tsunami inundation on the strength of the building. The school building of SMPN 6 Banda Aceh is selected as the case study. Seven analysis cases were carried out to simulate the degradation of the column cross-section caused by tsunami inundation. The reduction of the column cross-section was determined from 5 to 25% with increments of 5%. The analysis results revealed that the decrease in strength has occurred from the case of 5% degradation and the vulnerability started to increase with the increase of degradation level. In the case of 25% degradation, 90% of the structure’s column was at an unsafe level.

SPATIOTEMPORAL VISUALIZATION OF TSUNAMI WAVES USING KML ON GOOGLE EARTH

Abstract. Disaster risk is a function of hazard and vulnerability. Risk is defined as the expected losses, including lives, personal injuries, property damages, and economic disruptions, due to a particular hazard for a given area and time period. Risk assessment is one of the key elements of a natural disaster management strategy as it allows for better disaster mitigation and preparation. It provides input for informed decision making, and increases risk awareness among decision makers and other stakeholders. Virtual globes such as Google Earth can be used as a visualization tool. Proper spatiotemporal graphical representations of the concerned risk significantly reduces the amount of effort to visualize the impact of the risk and improves the efficiency of the decision-making process to mitigate the impact of the risk. The spatiotemporal visualization of tsunami waves for disaster management process is an attractive topic in geosciences to assist investigation of areas at tsunami risk. In this paper, a method for coupling virtual globes with tsunami wave arrival time models is presented. In this process we have shown 2D+Time of tsunami waves for propagation and inundation of tsunami waves, both coastal line deformation, and the flooded areas. In addition, the worst case scenario of tsunami on Chabahar port derived from tsunami modelling is also presented using KML on google earth.

Simulation of nearshore wave processes by a depth-integrated non-hydrostatic finite element model

This paper presents CCHE2D-NHWAVE, a depth-integrated non-hydrostatic finite element model for simulating nearshore wave processes. The governing equations are a depth-integrated vertical momentum equation and the shallow water equations including extra non-hydrostatic pressure terms, which enable the model to simulate relatively short wave motions, where both frequency dispersion and nonlinear effects play important roles. A special type of finite element method, which was previously developed for a well-validated depth-integrated free surface flow model CCHE2D, is used to solve the governing equations on a partially staggered grid using a pressure projection method. To resolve discontinuous flows, involving breaking waves and hydraulic jumps, a momentum conservation advection scheme is developed based on the partially staggered grid. In addition, a simple and efficient wetting and drying algorithm is implemented to deal with the moving shoreline. The model is first verified by analytical solutions, and then validated by a series of laboratory experiments. The comparison shows that the developed wave model without the use of any empirical parameters is capable of accurately simulating a wide range of nearshore wave processes, including propagation, breaking, and run-up of nonlinear dispersive waves and transformation and inundation of tsunami waves.

Numerical simulations of the coastal effects of tsunami waves caused by the 1993 Hokkaido-Nansei-Oki earthquake

Generally, tsunami waves become hazardous only when approaching the coast. Studying the runup and inundation of tsunami waves is important for understanding the tsunami evolution and for tsunami hazard assessment. Here, we simulated the 1993 Hokkaido-Nansei-Oki (HNO) tsunami using a finite-difference model based on nonlinear shallow-water equations. We focused on the runup and inundation of tsunami wave propagation onto coastal area of Okushiri Island near Hokkaido, Japan, and investigate the relationship of different runup heights with the morphology and bathymetry of the seashore. In the simulation, a nested 4-layer grid system and moving boundary technique are adopted to study runup and inundation. The calculated tsunami heights and inundations in the region agreed well with field measurements. The local bathymetric and topographic characteristics had a first-order effect on the runup. Numerical experiments show that the focusing of certain local bathymetric features would amplify both wave height and current velocity remarkably. The results show that computation on dense grids is necessary to reproduce the observed runup heights, and inundation velocity is an important factor preventing tsunami devastation. In addition, we discussed the potential capability of sediment transport to illustrate the impact of tsunami waves on coastal geomorphology.