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Hazard assessment of underwater landslide-generated tsunamis: a case study in the Padang region, Indonesia

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Abstract

Submarine landslides can generate local tsunamis with high run-ups, posing a hazard to human lives and coastal facilities. Both ancient (giant Storegga slide off Norwegian coast, 8200 B. P.) and recent (Papua New Guinea, 1998) events show high potential danger of tsunamigenic landslides and the importance of mitigation efforts. This contribution presents newly discovered landslides 70 km off Padang (Western Sumatra, Indonesia) based on recent bathymetry measurements. This highly populated city with over 750,000 inhabitants exhibits high tsunami vulnerability due to its very low elevation. We model tsunamis that might have been induced by the detected landslide events. Estimations of run-up heights extrapolated from offshore tsunami amplitudes for Padang and other locations in the northern Mentawai fore-arc basin yield maximum values of about 3 m. We also provide a systematic parametric study of landslide-induced tsunamis, which allows us to distinguish potentially dangerous scenarios for Padang. Inside the fore-arc basin, scenarios involving volumes of 0.5–25 km³ could endanger Padang. Apart from slide volume, the hazard distribution mainly depends on three landslide parameters: distance to Padang, water depth in the generation region, and slide direction.

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Acknowledgments

Data collection was conducted with grant 03G0189 (SUMATRA) of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany. This is publication 24 of the GITEWS project (German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System). The project is carried out through a large group of scientists and engineers from GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ) and its partners from DLR, AWI GKSS, IFM-GEOMAR, UNU, BGR, GTZ, as well as from Indonesian and other international partners. Funding is provided by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), grant 03TSU01. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and constructive comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Telegrafenberg, 14473, Potsdam, Germany

    Sascha Brune & Andrey Y. Babeyko

  2. Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Stilleweg 2, 30655, Hannover, Germany

    Christoph Gaedicke & Stefan Ladage

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  1. Sascha Brune
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  2. Andrey Y. Babeyko
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  3. Christoph Gaedicke
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  4. Stefan Ladage
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Correspondence to Sascha Brune.

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Brune, S., Babeyko, A.Y., Gaedicke, C. et al. Hazard assessment of underwater landslide-generated tsunamis: a case study in the Padang region, Indonesia. Nat Hazards 53, 205–218 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-009-9424-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-009-9424-x

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