The extent to which education provides protection in the face of a large-scale natural disaster is investigated. Using longitudinal population-representative survey data collected in two provinces on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, before and after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, we examine changes in a broad array of indicators of well-being of adults. Focusing on adults who were living, befo...

Whether or not mangroves function as buffers against tsunamis is the subject of in-depth research, the importance of which has been neglected or underestimated before the recent killer tsunami struck. Our preliminary post-tsunami surveys of Sri Lankan mangrove sites with different degrees of degradation indicate that human activity exacerbated the damage inflicted on the coastal zone by the tsu...

A new method for real-time tsunami forecasting will provide NOAA’s Tsunami Warning Centers with forecast guidance tools during an actual tsunami event. PMEL has developed the methodology of combining real-time data from tsunameters with numerical model estimates to provide siteand event-specific forecasts for tsunamis in real time. An overview of the technique and testing of this methodology is...

The important part of the tsunami science is focused on studying the considerable influence of natural geographical objects, like islands and coast bathymetry, on the tsunami waves. Currently, such investigations are mostly implementing by physical modeling allowing obtaining good results on impacting submarine barriers on tsunami wave propagation but actually very expensive. We are designing a...

In the aftermath of earthquakes, tsunamis, such as the 2011 Great East Japan Tsunami, caused enormous damage around the world. With the extreme disaster events of the past, nations improved disaster preparedness and response through sensors and tsunami early warning systems. Even with system usage, however, governments still need to warn the targeted citizens – who may be anywhere within the vu...

We examined structural changes in the molluscan community for ten years (2001-2010) before and five years (2011-2015) after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami around Matsushima Bay, Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan. Before the earthquake and tsunami, Ruditapes philippinarum, Macoma incongrua, Pillucina pisidium, and Batillaria cumingii were dominant, and an alien p...

In the framework of the German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) the assessment of tsunami risk is an essential part of the overall activities. The scientific and technical approach for the tsunami risk assessment has been developed and the results are implemented in the national Indonesian Tsunami Warning Centre and are provided to the national and regional disaster management a...

[1] The speed of tsunami waves is typically calculated using the shallow-water approximation over a rigid-body Earth. Recent comparisons of tsunami arrival times from the 11 March 2011 tsunami suggest, however, that the standard formulation has errors around the 1% level, and it has been suggested that the elasticity of the Earth can explain the discrepancy. While previous work has indeed shown...

Natural disasters pose a threat to isolated populations of species with restricted distributions, especially those inhabiting islands. The Nicobar long tailed macaque.Macaca fascicularis umbrosus, is one such species found in the three southernmost islands (viz. Great Nicobar, Little Nicobar and Katchal) of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, India. These islands were hit by a massive tsunami ...

The Papua New Guinea (PNG) tsunami of July 1998 was a seminal event because it demonstrated that relatively small and relatively deepwater Submarine Mass Failures (SMFs) can cause devastating local tsunamis that strike without warning. There is a comprehensive data set that proves this event was caused by a submarine slump. Yet, the source of the tsunami has remained controversial. This controv...