Tsunami Risk Assessment for Effective Tsunami Prevention

Abstract

Recently, many countries have suffered from great damage by the devastating tsunamis triggered by the undersea earthquakes. This causes a significant increase in interest for tsunami disaster prevention measures and tsunami damage abatement technologies are being studied. Tsunami disaster prevention measures are typically focused on the tsunami hazard map based on the highest submerged depth and the emergency action plan, which is Code of Conduct when the tsunami disaster occurs. With customary tsunami hazard map, local risk can be determined by the inundation height. But the flow velocity also should be considered to conduct detailed local risk management. In this study, the risk assessment formulas based on the previous studies were used for people to calculate the local risk by the tsunami. In order to assess the tsunami hazard risk to people, inundation depth and corresponding critical velocity were applied for investigating the stability of support. To apply the method to tsunami, recent research which is about overtopping wave were applied. This approach was applied on Imwon Port in Korea as a study area with one of possible tsunami cases which threaten the Korean peninsula. The propagation and inundation of the tsunami were simulated by a two-dimensional linear Boussinesq equations and nonlinear shallow-water equations. Then, the risk assessment analysis was applied at each point. Finally, the regional risk was calculated in the study area and risk management maps were obtained.