International Symposium on Tsunami Disaster Mitigation in Future
Jan. 17-18, 2005, Kobe, Japan
TSUNAMI DISASTER MITIGATION RESEARCH
IN THE UNITED STATES
Michael J. Briggs1, Jose C. Borrero2, and Costas E. Synolakis2
1
Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, US Army Engineer Research and Development Center
3909 Halls Ferry Rd., CEERD-HN-HH, Vicksburg, MS 39180-6199 USA
2
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, CA 90089-2531, USA
jborrero@usc.edu,
Abstract
This paper presents an update of the Corps of Engineers tsunami disaster mitigation
research in the United States. Because the U.S. has not had any major tsunami disasters
in many years, the Corps does not have a formal mission or policy for incorporating
tsunami runup considerations in the design wave height for coastal structures. In the
1990's the Corps' Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory did participate in substantial
physical modeling of tsunami runup on beaches, vertical walls, and islands, as part of the
National Science Foundation's Joint Tsunami Runup Study. These data have been
extensively published and used by the international tsunami community to provide a
better understanding of the physical phenomena and verify numerical models. The
University of Southern California has recently been working with the Corps, and other
federal and state agencies in California to develop tsunami inundation maps based on
farfield and local tectonic and landslide sources. An example using the ports of Los
Angeles and Long Beach in southern California is presented to illustrate the significance
of these local co-seismic sources.
Keywords: Tsunami runup; Tsunami sources; Physical models; Island; Inundation zones;
Southern California
Introduction
Prior to 2004, Synolakis (2003) reported that there had been 12 major tsunamis around the Pacific Rim
in the last ten years, causing more than 3,000 deaths and
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B in damages. As horrible as these
numbers are, they pale in comparison to the mega-tsunami that occurred in the Indian Ocean on
December 26, 2004. This disaster will probably go down in history as one of the worst natural
disasters and tsunamis on record with over 150,000 people killed or missing, millions homeless, and
billions of dollars in damages.
The United States is fortunate in that only five states have a serious risk to tsunami hazards.
These are Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington, all on the Pacific Ocean. Although the
East coast of the U.S. could be vulnerable to tsunami attack if there was a volcanic eruption and
landslide in the Canary Islands offshore northwest Africa, the probability at 1 in 10,000 years is
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