HR: 0800h
AN: S51D-1039    [Abstracts]
TI: Tsunami Inundation Mapping and Hazard Risk Assessment for Alaska Coastal Communities.
AU: * Suleimani, E
EM: elena@giseis.alaska.edu
AF: Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 903 Koyukuk Drive P.O. Box 757320, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320 United States
AU: Hansen, R
EM: roger@giseis.alaska.edu
AF: Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 903 Koyukuk Drive P.O. Box 757320, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320 United States
AU: Combellick, R
EM: rod@dnr.state.ak.us
AF: Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, 3354 College Road, Fairbanks, AK 99709 United States
AB: Tsunami waves are a real threat for many Alaska coastal locations, and community preparedness plays an important role in saving lives and property. The Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys collaborated with the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management in forming the Alaska Tsunami Mapping Team (ATMT). This group of researches participates in the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program by evaluating and mapping potential tsunami inundation of selected coastal communities in Alaska. The communities are chosen on the basis of location, infrastructure, availability of bathymetric and topographic data, and willingness for a community to use results for hazard mitigation. ATMT develops hypothetical tsunami scenarios that are based on the parameters of potential underwater earthquakes and landslides for a specified coastal community. Then, we perform model simulations for each of the source scenarios. Numerical results and historical observations are combined in order to develop a worst case scenario. ATMT delivers the modeling results to the community for local tsunami hazard planning and construction of evacuation maps. Inundation maps are completed for three communities on Kodiak Island, and two communities in Kachemak Bay. The work is under way for Seward and Sitka. Seward, a community in the Prince William Sound area, suffered an extensive damage and 12 fatalities during the 1964 tsunami. The 1964 Good Friday earthquake induced submarine landsliding in deltaic sediments underlying Seward. Sitka, a community in South-Eastern Alaska, is vulnerable to far-field tsunamis from the Gulf of Alaska, as well as to locally landslide-generated tsunamis. We address the problem of predicting runup of tsunami waves by solving nonlinear shallow-water equations with a finite-difference method. Embedded grids of different resolution are employed to increase spatial resolution in the shelf area. Numerical simulations yield runup heights, extent of maximum inundation for chosen tsunami scenarios, depths of inundation on dry land, and maximum velocity current distribution in inundation zones.
DE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty
DE: 6615 Legislation and regulations (6324)
DE: 7212 Earthquake ground motions and engineering seismology
DE: 7223 Earthquake interaction, forecasting, and prediction (1217, 1242)
DE: 8123 Dynamics: seismotectonics
SC: Seismology [S]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005