New tsunami software will help protect vulnerable coastal communities

A new piece of software has been developed to help protect vulnerable coastal communities from the destruction of a tsunami. The mathematical model has created significant interest in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan six months ago. The software can be used to predict the flow induced by the tsunami as it hits land. It can predict the run-up and flooding as the tsunami hits the coast and should inform the future design and location of buildings and structures in tsunami prone areas. Professor Nicholas Dodd, from the Coastal Dynamics and Engineering Group (CoDEG) in the Infrastructure and Geomatics Division of the Faculty of Engineering at The University of Nottingham, said: "This software, and indeed the work we've been doing generally on swash type motions, is world leading. For the first time we have reasonable confidence that we can accurately predict the morphological impact of a tsunami from a given a sediment transport description, as well as the inundation." Development of the new software is the result of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), set up in 2009, between The University of Nottingham and HR Wallingford, an independent research and consultancy in civil engineering and environmental hydraulics. The research was also funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).