tsunami hazard assessment

Documentation of tsunami hazards for a coastal community is needed to identify populations and assets at risk, and the level of that risk. This assessment requires knowledge of probable tsunami sources (such as earthquakes, landslides, and volcanic eruptions), their likelihood of occurrence, and the characteristics of tsunamis from those sources at different places along the coast. For those communities, data of earlier (historical and paleotsunamis) tsunamis may help quantify these factors. For most communities, however, only very limited or no past data exist. For these coasts, numerical models of tsunami inundation can provide estimates of areas that will be flooded in the event of a local or distant tsunamigenic earthquake or a local landslide.