Risk Assessment and Design of Prevention Structures for Enhanced Tsunami Disaster Resilience (RAPSODI)/Euro-Japan Collaboration

Abstract

The 2011 Tōhoku event showed the massive destruction potential of tsunamis. The EuroJapan "Risk assessment and design of prevention structures for enhanced tsunami disaster resilience (RAPSODI)" project aimed at using data from the event to evaluate tsunami mitigation strategies and to validate a framework for a quantitative tsunami mortality risk analysis. Coastal structures and mitigation strategies against tsunamis in Europe and Japan are compared. Failure mechanisms of coastal protection structures exposed to tsunamis are discussed based on field data. Knowledge gaps on failure modes of different structures under different tsunami loading conditions are identified. Results of the wave-flume laboratory experiments on rubble mound breakwaters are used to assess their resilience against tsunami impact. For the risk analysis, high-resolution digital elevation data are applied for the inundation modeling. The hazard is represented by the maximum flow depth, the exposure is described by the location of the population, and the mortality is a function of flow depth and building vulnerability. A thorough search for appropriate data on the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami was performed. The results of the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami mortality hindcast for the city of Ishinomaki substantiate that the tsunami mortality risk model can help to identify high-mortality risk areas and the main risk drivers.

Physical modelling of tsunami barrier and debris interaction

“…Following the earthquake, a strong tsunami and its devastating impact particularly hit the prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima. As a consequence, the earthquake and tsunami damaged over 250,000 buildings, destroyed 140,000 of them completely and claimed almost 20,000 human lives (Dunbar et al 2011;Fraser et al 2013;Harbitz et al 2016). Likewise, the tsunami event in the Indian Ocean 2004 and the recent one in Indonesia in September 2018 show, that despite their scarcity such events must not be underestimated (Shibayama 2015;Widiyanto et al 2019).…”

From tsunami risk assessment to disaster risk reduction – the case of Oman

“…The high potential for tsunami generation of MSZ makes it one of the most tsunamigenic areas of the Indian Ocean. The most recent tsunami event of seismic origin was the 1945 Makran tsunami, which caused more than 4000 fatalities and property losses in Iran, Pakistan, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (Heck, 1947;Heidarzadeh et al, 2008Heidarzadeh et al, , 2009Heidarzadeh and Kijko, 2011;Heidarzadeh and Satake, 2014a, b;Mokhtari, 2011. Similar episodes may occur again in this area.…”

“…There are several works following this approach, among others Tinti et al (2011) and Valencia et al (2011) within the frame of the SCHEMA Project (2007)(2008)(2009)(2010), Leone et al (2011), Suppasri et al (2011Suppasri et al ( , 2013Suppasri et al ( , 2018, Mas et al (2012), and Shoji and Nakamura (2017), with a main focus on infrastructure and building damage. Sato et al (2003), Sugimoto et al (2003), Koshimura et al (2006), Jonkman et al (2008) and Løvholt et al (2014) focused on human damage and casualties whereas Berryman (2005) and Harbitz et al (2016) dealt with both aspects.…”