Title
Understanding the extreme tsunami inundation in Onagawa Town by the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, Its effects in urban structures and coastal facilities
Date Issued
01 December 2016
Access level
open access
Resource Type
review
Author(s)
Tohoku University
Publisher(s)
World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte Ltd
Abstract
The 2011 Tohoku Tsunami is considered to be one of the most tragic events in Japan's disaster history, and represents an important milestone for the research community regarding the investigation of the characteristics of tsunami inundation. A thorough analysis of tsunami inundation was conducted using numerical modeling, and measurements from a video recorded from the rooftop of a building in Onagawa in Miyagi Prefecture. In this study, we analyze the destruction of buildings using numerical simulations and tsunami fragility functions. Numerical results for the locations at which the tsunami eyewitness video was recorded are compared with measurements. In addition, we considered the effect of the breakwater in Onagawa bay to evaluate its contribution to reducing overland tsunami inundation depths. The results of our simulations show that the maximum inundation depth due to the first incoming wave was over 16 m, and over 500 buildings were washed away with this first wave. This result is consistent with the video data. Further, we found that the breakwater, which was not originally designed against tsunami waves, reduced the maximum tsunami inundation depth at least by 2.0 m in Onagawa town.
Volume
58
Issue
4
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ciencias ambientales
Ingeniería de la construcción
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84992314167
Source
Coastal Engineering Journal
ISSN of the container
21664250
Sponsor(s)
This research was supported by the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS) grant, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) under the Project: Fusion of Real-time Simulation and Remote Sensing for Tsunami Damage Estimation to Latin America (JSPS-Grant: P16055).
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science - 16F16055, 25242035.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus