TSUNAMI RESEARCH GROUP

The Institute of Marine Sciences (IMS) Tsunami Research Group (TRG) is involved in the development of numerical tools for tsunami calculation. The TRG is led by Professor Zygmunt Kowalik. Co-investigators are: Juan J. Horrillo, IMS; William R. Knight, West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center (WCATWC) and Tom Logan, Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC).
The TRG has developed the Global Tsunami Model (GTM) based on the Non-Linear Shallow Water (NLSW) approach. A version of the GTM is actually used by the WCATWC. Non-hydrostatic codes like Boussinesq and Full Navier-Stokes have been developed as well and used for investigation and validation. The University of Alaska Fairbanks tsunami codes have been extensively validated and used for assesment of tsunami hazard, inundation, mapping and prediction of the tsunami arrival time.
Recently, the GTM has been updated to account for energy flux which has proved to be an efficient tool to pinpoint bathymetric features that enhance tsunami signal in specific location. Additional projects are underway to include energy flux formulation into non-hydrostatic codes.
The TRG belongs to the Institute of Marine Science (IMS), School of Fisheries & Ocean Sciences (SFOS).

Modified 12 October 2007. Website questions or comments to Juan J. Horrillo.