Tsunami Impact Evaluation For Coastal Areas

The 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami caused immense devastation to coastal communities and infrastructure around the Indian Ocean and further afield. This event highlighted significant lack of awareness, and a lack of tools to predict tsunami impact on coastal zones, structures and infrastructure. This paper reviews the state of the art of the different components necessary for the evaluation of coastal vulnerability to tsunami. Strategies for coastal zone management require better understanding of the hazard drivers (e.g. storms, surges, or tsunamis) or the responses (flooding, erosion, structural damage) and of community vulnerability. Prediction methods for these rare but damaging coastal processes are far from perfect, so physical and/or numerical modelling are still essential tools to understand storm and tsunami actions and require further study. Following the 2004 event there has been various international research efforts to investigate tsunami processes, and some research on those tsunami actions that cause structural damage. This paper presents some of the state of the art advancements made towards the quantification of tsunami impact and highlights persisting gaps of knowledge in the field.