Publication

Understanding the Extreme Tsunami Inundation in Onagawa Town by the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, Its E?ects in Urban Structures and Coastal Facilities


Publication Date : 2016-10-21
Author : Adriano, B.Hayashi, S.Gokon, H.Mas, E.Koshimura, S.
Countries :
Disaster Management Theme :
Disaster Type : Flood
Document Type : Research Paper
Languange : en
Link : http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/S0578563416400131

Abstact :

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 e?ect 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 ?rst incoming wave was over 16 m, and over 500 buildings were washed away with this ?rst 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.