Multiscale Tsunami-Induced Effects on the Natural and Built Environments: The Reconnaissance and Modeling of the 2024 Noto Earthquake-Tsunami Sequence in Japan Coastal Infrastructure

The effects of tsunami-induced damage on coastal communities commonly fall short in addressing two critical influencing parameters: the multi-scale temporal and spatial domain of the system. Local tsunamigenic earthquakes often cause a sequential impact of seismic and tsunami waves on coastal communities, whose arrivals are strongly influenced by generation, propagation and site-effects. Moreover, the characterization of effects on tsunami flows due to regional bathymetry and urban topology, along with multiphysics fluid-structure, remains a modeling challenge. Physical and numerical models require highly specialized and sophisticated resources, while data to calibrate and validate solutions are scarce or nonexistent.

By developing a synergistic framework that incorporates these multi-scale demands (natural hazards assessment) and infrastructural resistance (geometric and material nonlinear behavior), this research combines valuable and unique high-resolution reconnaissance data with modeling approaches to yield a deeper understanding of the failure mechanisms observed on the built environment during the 2024 Noto Peninsula event. This international collaboration, addressing tsunami pathways and structural vulnerabilities, aims at providing quantifiable insights into the effectiveness of risk reduction strategies.