The Lituya Bay landslide-generated mega-tsunami – numerical simulation and sensitivity analysis
2018
Abstract. The 1958 Lituya Bay landslide-generated
mega-tsunami is simulated using the Landslide-HySEA model, a recently
developed
finite-volume Savage–Hutter shallow water coupled numerical model.
Two factors are crucial if the main objective of the numerical simulation is
to reproduce the maximal run-up with an accurate simulation of the inundated
area and a precise recreation of the known trimline of the 1958 mega-tsunami
of Lituya Bay: first, the accurate reconstruction of the initial slide and then
the choice of a suitable coupled landslide–fluid model able to reproduce how
the energy released by the landslide is transmitted to the water and then
propagated. Given the numerical model, the choice of parameters appears to be
a point of major importance, which leads us to perform a sensitivity analysis.
Based on public domain topo-bathymetric data, and on information extracted
from the work of Miller (1960), an approximation of Gilbert Inlet
topo-bathymetry was set up and used for the numerical simulation of the
mega-event. Once optimal model parameters were set, comparisons with
observational data were performed in order to validate the numerical results.
In the present work, we demonstrate that a shallow water type of model is
able to accurately reproduce such an extreme event as the Lituya Bay
mega-tsunami. The resulting numerical simulation is one of the first
successful attempts (if not the first) at numerically reproducing, in detail,
the main features of this event in a realistic 3-D basin geometry, where no
smoothing or other stabilizing factors in the bathymetric data are applied.
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