Tsunamis: Case Studies and Recent Developments

Twenty papers comprise a timely review of state-of-the-art tsunami research. Various approaches are taken to study tsunamis: field-surveys of recent tsunamis; analysis of tide-gauge records; numerical simulations of tsunami generation and propagation, tank experiments, and geological studies of tsunami deposits. The papers are also divided into two parts: case studies and recent developments. The first part reports on tsunamis generated by volcanic eruptions and earthquakes around the Pacific Ocean. The papers include summaries of post-tsunami surveys in the last decade; reports on the two tsunamis in 2003 which occurred in Fiordland in New Zealand and Tokachi-oki, Japan; reports and mechanism of tsunamis from the 1994 Rabaul, 1883 Krakatau and 1741 Oshima-Oshima eruptions; resonance and delayed peaks observed on the Sanriku coast of northern Japan; studies of tsunami deposits in Japan and Russia used to infer paleotsunamis along the Kuril trench; estimation of tsunami energy along the Aleutian-Alaska and Canadian coast based on historical data. The second part reports recent developments in numerical computations, monitoring, and assessments of coastal hazards. The papers include assessments of future tsunami impacts, based on the past tsunami or marine survey data, for the Ecuador, Portuguese and Korean coasts; adjoint technique for waveform inversion of source parameters; experimental design to study underwater landslides; numerical and experimental studies to evaluate the effects of coastal vegetation and control forests on tsunamis; proposals of new tsunami monitoring techniques using acoustic waves and electromagnetic signals.