After a relatively quiet 28-year period following the 1964 Alaska earthquake and tsunami, two 1992 earthquakes occurred near Nicaragua and Flores Island, Indonesia. These earthquakes produced highly destructive tsunamis and opened a 25-year period of numerous devastating events, including two of the most destructive natural disasters in recent human history: the 26 December 2004 Sumatra tsunami that killed about 230,000 people and impacted at least 16 countries directly, and the 11 March 2011 Tohoku tsunami that killed almost 20,000 people and destroyed the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. The two 1992 events marked the beginning of a "modern tsunami science era". The twenty-two papers in this special volume present the frontiers of tsunami science and research, and demonstrate the unprecedented progress achieved during this period. The contributions review historical tsunami events and field surveys, tsunami source models, landslide generated tsunamis, and tsunami numerical modeling. It concludes with contributions studying tsunami hazard assessment and warning, reflecting an everlasting challenge in the context of the advancement of tsunami science and of efforts in mitigation. This book is of interest to scientists and practitioners as well postgraduate students in geophysics, oceanography and coastal engineering involved in all aspects of tsunamis, from earthquake source processes to transoceanic wave propagation, from coastal impacts to hazard assessment, combining recent case studies with advances in tsunami science and natural hazards mitigation.
Previously published in Pure and Applied Geophysics, Volume 176, Issue 7, 2019
About the Author: Utku Kânoğlu is professor at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. He holds a Ph.D. from the Tsunami Research Center, University of Southern California. He is actively involved with all aspects of tsunami research including numerical, laboratory and field studies, with an emphasis on analytical solutions; leading to forecasting, hazard assessment, and mitigation and planning.
Yuichiro Tanioka is currently professor at the Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University, Japan. He is also a member of earthquake research committees of the Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion in Japan. He was director of the Institute of Seismology and Volcanology at Hokkaido University until 2018. He was also a vice-president of the Seismological Society of Japan until 2017. He is interested in research on tsunami generation mechanism, source processes of great earthquakes, and development of tsunami early warning techniques.
Emile A. Okal is professor Emeritus at the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Northwestern University. He is a seismologist with a specialization in tsunamis, and the origin of deep earthquakes. He holds a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology.
Maria Ana Baptista is professor at Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa and an invited professor at Universidade de Lisboa. She holds a Ph.D. in Physics - Geophysics of the University of Lisbon. Her research interests are tsunamis and natural hazards. She was the Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Coordination Group of IOC UNESCO for the implementation of the Tsunami Early Warning System in the period 2007-2011, and involved actively in the implementation of the Portuguese Tsunami Warning System. She coordinated the FP7 project on tsunamis - ASTARTE (Assessment Strategy and Risk Reduction for Tsunamis in Europe).
Alexander B. Rabinovich, Ph.D., is a research scientist at both the Tsunami Laboratory, P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia and at the Institute of Ocean Sciences, Sidney, BC, Canada. His research interests include tsunamis, sea level variations, seiches, tides, wave dynamics of shelf and coastal regions, time series analysis.
