2011 TOHOKU TSUNAMI RUNUP AND DEVASTATING DAMAGES AROUND YAMADA BAY, IWATE: SURVEYS AND NUMERICAL SIMULATION

Akio Okayasu, Takenori Shimozono, Shinji Sato, Yoshimitsu Tajima, Haijiang Liu, Tomohiro Takagawa, Hermann M. Fritz

Abstract


Distributions of inundation and runup height for the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake Tsunami were measured in and outside Yamada Bay located at the center of Iwate Prefecture, Japan. Numerical simulations were conducted to reproduce flow, inundation and runup height distributions. Surface elevation profiles recorded by the GPS wave gauges were used as the offshore boundary condition. In order to investigate characteristics of tsunami response to different geomorphological features, frequency separation was tried for the tsunami incident wave. It was found that the high frequency component was responsible for large tsunami height at narrow inlets and open bays, whereas the low frequency component had significant influence for inundation in closed bays.

Keywords


2011 Tohoku Tsunami; Yamada Town; tsunami survey; tsunami simulation; GPS wave gauge

References


Fritz, H. M., D. A. Phillips, A. Okayasu, T. Shimozono, H. Liu, F. Mohammed, V. Skanavis, C. E. Synolakis, and T. Takahashi. 2012. 2011 Japan tsunami current velocity measurements from survivor videos at Kesennuma Bay using LiDAR, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L00G23, doi:10.1029/2011GL050686.http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2011GL050686

Fujii, Y., K. Satake, S. Sakai, M. Shinohara, and T. Kanazawa. 2011. Tsunami source of the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake, Earth Planets Space, 63, 815–820.http://dx.doi.org/10.5047/eps.2011.06.010

Geographical Survey Institute. 1961. Report on the survey of the abnormal tidal waves tsunami caused by the Chilean Earthquakes on May 24 1960, 100p.

Japan Meteorological Agency. 2012. http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/2011_Earthquake/2011_Earthquake.html (referred on Sep. 15, 2012).

Liu, H., T. Shimozono, T. Takagawa, A. Okayasu, H. M. Fritz, S. Sato, and Y. Tajima. 2012. The 11 March 2011 Tohoku tsunami survey in Rikuzentakata and comparison with historical events. Pure Appl. Geophys., doi:10.1007/s00024-012-0496-2 (online first, in press).http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00024-012-0496-2

Mori, N., T. Takahashi, and the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake Tsunami Joint Survey Group. 2012. Nationwide post event survey and analysis of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake Tsunami, Coastal Engineering Journal, JSCE, 54, 1250001 (27p).

Shimozono, T., S. Sato, A. Okayasu, Y. Tajima, H. M. Fritz, H. Liu, and T. Takagawa. 2012. Propagation and inundation characteristics of the 2011 Tohoku tsunami on the central Sanriku coast, Coastal Engineering Journal, JSCE, 54, 1250004 (17p).

The 2011 Tohoku Earthquake Tsunami Joint Survey Group. 2012.


Full Text: PDF

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.