Authors / CoAuthors
Griffin, J.D.
Abstract
The tragic events of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami highlighted the real threat posed by tsunamis to coastal communities worldwide. With subduction zones to the north and east of Australia, tsunamis pose a real threat to the Australian coast. Geoscience Australia has been developing methodologies for quantifying the severity of tsunami impacts to assist emergency management authorities in planning for this threat. Tsunami inundation modelling is computationally intensive and is often restricted to a small number of discrete communities. As a result, communities must be prioritised for this detailed modelling. One method for prioritisation is the Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Assessment (PTHA) of Australia. In the PTHA, tsunamis were modelled from all likely earthquake sources across the deep ocean using a computationally faster linear solution and coarser model domain. Results are considered valid only to the 100 m depth contour, where we calculate return periods for tsunami wave height around Australia and generate a database of tsunami wave forms. However, tsunami waves are shaped considerably by the bathymetry between the 100 m depth contour and the coast, and tsunami behaviour near the coast is therefore highly non-linear, dependent on elevation, coastline shape, wave height, period and momentum. This non-linear reality of the near shore environment raises a number of questions. Is offshore wave height alone the best predictor of onshore tsunami hazard? Analytical solutions to the 1-D shallow water equations exist for predicting wave run-up on plane beaches. Can these be applied to offshore waves to measure inundation potential? Or are other metrics, such as wave energy, more appropriate? Comparisons with results from detailed inundation models will explore the utility of these measures for prioritising communitie
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nonGeographicDataset
eCat Id
69780
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Keywords
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- External PublicationConference Paper
- ( Theme )
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- tsunamis
- ( Theme )
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- geohazards
- Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)
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- Earth Sciences
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- Published_Internal
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2009-01-01T00:00:00
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