Optical measurements of tsunami inundation through an urban waterfront modeled in a large-scale laboratory basin

This paper presents optical measurements of tsunami inundation through an urban waterfront in a laboratory wave basin. The physical model was constructed at 1:50 scale and was an idealization of the town of Seaside, Oregon. The fixed-bed model was designed to study the initial inundation zone along an urban waterfront, such that the flow around several large buildings could be observed. This paper presents an analysis of the optical measurements made with two overhead video cameras, focusing on tracking the leading edge of the tsunami inundation through the urban waterfront and quantifies the accuracy of the algorithm used to track the edge. The results show that the methodology provides high-resolution information in both time and space of the leading edge position, and that these data can be used to quantify the influence of large macro-roughness features on the tsunami inundation processes in laboratory settings. The overall effect of the macro-roughness was to decrease the bore propagation speed relative to the control section with no macro-roughness. The bore speed could be reduced by as much as 40% due to the presence of the macro-roughness relative to the control section. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.