Preliminary Study on Long-Term Flooding After the Tsunami

Abstract

After the Nankai earthquake in 1946, the resultant flooding lasted for a long time, because seawater remained on land after the tsunami in Kochi city. Large-scale flooding occurred in Ishinomaki city immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. Long-term flooding may hamper disaster responses such as rescue and recovery activities. This paper studied the risks of long-term flooding after the Nankai earthquake in Tokushima city based on a paleographical survey and numerical analysis. The paleographical survey identified statements such as “seawater sometimes flowed onto the land at the full tide,” suggesting occurrences of long-term flooding after previous Nankai earthquakes. The numerical analysis separately calculated values inside and outside the levee. The tsunami waveforms outside the analysis area obtained by tsunami numerical simulation was used as the boundary condition of the inland flow modeling, that is water was introduced inside the levee when the tsunami water level exceeded the upper end of the levee. The two layers of ground surface and the drain were defined to calculate the flow, including water exchange between the two layers, and the water was drained forcefully outside the levee using a drainage pump. The possibility of long-term flooding in the analysis area is suggested when a large-scale earthquake occurs in the Nankai trough.

Childcare Center Evacuation to Vertical Shelters in a Nankai Trough Tsunami: Models to Predict and Mitigate Risk

“…A tsunami often causes long-term inundation of low-lying land [46]. There are concerns about long-term inundation of the plains in Kochi Prefecture in the event of a Nankai Trough earthquake and tsunami [47].…”