RAPID: The Role of Urban Development Patterns in Mitigating the Effects of Tsunami Run-up

Imagecat, Inc., Long Beach CA

Investigators

Abstract

This Grant for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) project seeks to understand the relationship between urban development patterns and the extent of physical damage caused by widespread tsunami run up. The 11 March 2011 Tohoku, Japan earthquake caused significant damage all along the northeastern coast of Japan. In order to understand how the built environment can affect the performance of communities in a tsunami, the project will study at least nine communities in the Miyagi/Chiba/Ibaraki Prefectures ¨C areas ranging from minor to moderate damage to complete devastation. The central research question is: Can the urban topology of a community mitigate the effects of a tsunami by isolating the more damaging surge effects to a few well designed and well placed buildings, thus limiting damage to protected buildings to just rising water effects. The main objectives of this study are: 1) to perform field studies to collect perishable data on coastal community performance following the Tohoku earthquake, 2) to develop an understanding of the data landscape in post earthquake Japan, and 3) to develop a preliminary understanding of the role that urban development patterns played in either mitigating or exacerbating tsunami induced impacts. This project will gather new information to systematically and comprehensively assess the effect that urban development patterns have in mitigating or exacerbating the effects of tsunamis. Such information would complement current studies that focus only on the performance of individual structures, i.e., not on the performance of communities. This information can also provide an important reference point for any future studies on long term recovery in Japan by documenting the initial damage states of representative communities along the coast of Japan. In addition to data collection, this project will explore new methods of performing rapid damage assessment using distributed visual analytics and crowd sourcing, and high resolution aerial and satellite imagery; these methods can be vital in situations where immediate field access is not possible or damage is widespread (as was the case in the Tohoku earthquake). Furthermore, the knowledge gained in this study will help to inform future tsunami loss modeling activities by introducing community based parameters that can either enhance or exacerbate the direct effects of an earthquake. The results of this study will also enforce the notion that resilience should be viewed at a community level in order to minimize the socioeconomic impacts of large disasters. The knowledge gained from this study will help to improve regional preparedness plans for many coastal areas, including the west coast of the United States, which also experienced significant damage in the Tohoku earthquake.