Simulating Inundation using Tsunami Squares: Comparison to Multiple Tsunami Events

Abstract:

Tsunami Squares is a fast and computationally inexpensive wave computing software that utilizes a cellular automata approach to equivalently solve the shallow water equations. Unlike other wave simulators, Tsunami Squares can easily propagate waves from sea to land, allowing flooded areas along the coast to be mapped. Although much work has already been done to validate the accuracy of its wave computing capabilities, its inundation capabilities have not been thoroughly tested until now. The testing involved validation by comparison to these three known tsunami events due to their abundance of recorded inundation data: The 2004 Indian Ocean event, the 2010 Maule event, and the 2011 Tohoku event. Results show accurate agreement between the recorded data and simulated inundation for all three events. Tsunami Squares’ ability to create accurate inundation maps with relatively little computation cost gives way to its use in many applications including the creation of precomputed catalogs of inundation maps and machine learning.