Advances of tsunami inundation forecasting and its future perspectives

Bringing together state-of-the-art high-performance computing, remote sensing and spatial information sciences, we established a real-time tsunami inundation forecasting, damage estimation and mapping system to enhance disaster response. Using Tohoku University's vector supercomputer SX-ACE, we accomplished “10-10-10 challenge”, to complete tsunami source determination in 10 minutes, tsunami inundation modeling and mapping impacts in 10 minutes with 10 m grid resolution. Given the maximum flow depth distribution, we perform quantitative estimation of exposed population using census data, and the numbers of damaged structures by applying tsunami fragility curves. After the potential tsunami-affected areas and structural damage are estimated, the analysis gets focused and moves on to the “verification” phase using remote sensing. A semi-automated method to detect building damage in the tsunami-affected areas is developed using high-resolution SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) data so that the simulated results are verified and obtain a feedback to improve the accuracy of tsunami inundation forecasting.