A simplified approach for efficiently simulating submarine slump generated tsunamis

A simplified approach was proposed to efficiently simulate the tsunamis generated by a submarine slump. The landslide tsunami generation process was simulated using a long-wave model, simplifying the wave generation problem as a slump traveling down a plane slope with a prescribed trajectory. As a result, the landslide tsunami generation process was parameterized by 11 input parameters. The wave profile at the end of the wave generation process can then be specified as the initial conditions in any numerical tsunami propagation model to study the subsequent tsunami propagation. To demonstrate the capability of this new landslide tsunami generation approach, we used it in combination with an existing Boussinesq wave solver to simulate the 1998 Papua New Guinea landslide tsunami. The results based on the newly calculated physics-based wave profile compare reasonably well with field measurements and the results based on an existing tuning-based wave profile. Sensitivity tests were performed to examine the sensitivity of the runup results to each of the 11 input parameters. Six sets of 100-case Monte Carlo experiments were conducted to investigate the propagation of uncertainty from the input parameters to the runup results. Runup uncertainty was found to be approximately 1.5 times the parameter uncertainty, highlighting the uncertain nature of landslide tsunamis. •A new approach is proposed to efficiently simulate submarine slump generated tsunamis.•The new approach shows good predictive ability for the 1998 Papua New Guinea tsunami.•Sensitivity analysis is performed for the 11 model input parameters.•More than 600 potential tsunami scenarios are simulated in Monte Carlo experiments.•Runup uncertainty is found to be 1.5 times the parameter uncertainty.