A NUMERICAL MODEL FOR THE EFFICIENT SIMULATION OF MULTIPLE LANDSLIDE-TSUNAMI SCENARIOS

Submarine landslides can pose serious tsunami hazard to coastal communities, occurring frequently near the coast itself. The properties of the tsunami and the consequent inundation depend on many factors, such as the geometry, the rheology and the kinematic of the landslide and the local bathymetry. However, when evaluating the risk related to landslide tsunamis, it is very difficult to accurately predict all of the above mentioned parameters. It is therefore useful to carry out many simulations of tsunami generation and propagation, with reference to different landslide scenarios, in order to deal with such uncertainties (see for example the probabilistic approach by Grilli et al. 2009). Accurate computations of landslide tsunami generation, propagation, and inundation, however, is computationally expensive, thus limiting the possible maximum number of scenarios. To partially overcome this difficulty, in the present research, a numerical model is proposed that can efficiently compute a large number of tsunami simulations triggered by different landslides. The main goal is to provide a numerical tool that can be used in a Monte Carlo approach framework. Following the study by Ward (2001), we propose a methodology taking advantage of the linear superposition of elementary tsunami solutions