Scientists and engineers are currently unable to assess underwater landslide and slump risk, or to predict their occurrence following a nearby earthquake, or to evaluate their tsunamigenic potential, or be able to warn coastal communities of imminent danger.
Underwater landslides and slumps pose a continuous threat to US coastal economic activity, including valuable offshore structures and port facilities. Some of the largest and most deadly tsunamis this decade (e.g. Papua New Guinea, Flores Island, Nicaragua) involved wave generation by nearshore underwater landslides or slumps. These events generated tsunami runup reaching 100 feet above sea level, far surpassing most previous predictions of maximum tsunami amplitude for such moderate earthquakes.
This action is to support an interdisciplinary approach to underwater landslide and slump hazard assessment, with the goal of contributing to the development of deterministic or probabilistic predictions of failure size and location. Specifically, it is to support (1) a workshop to present the state-of-the-art in all pertinent disciplines, (2) evaluate existing predictive models, (3) compare databases and case studies, (4) focus future research activities, (5) write recommendations for public agencies, and (6) discuss the creation of a research center to further predictions of underwater landslide and slump, and to apply these to the development of reliable tsunami warnings involving US coastal waters.
