Tsunami. The Underrated Hazard

‘‘The Hollow of the Deep-Sea Wave off Kanagawa’’ (Kanagawa Oki Uranami), a color woodcut, No. 20 from the series Thirty-Six Views of Fuji, circa 1831, by Katsushika Hokusai, a famous late 18th- and early 19th-century Japanese artist. Textbooks and many websites depict this wave as a tsunami wave, but in fact it is a wind-generated wave. It has a special shape called an N-wave, characterized by a deep leading trough and a very peaked crest. Some tsunami, such as the one that struck the Aitape coast of Papua New Guinea on July 17, 1998, emulate this form close to shore. Edward Bryant Tsunami The Underrated Hazard (Second Edition) Published in association with Praxis Publishing Chichester, UK Dr Edward Bryant Science Faculty Office University of Wollongong New South Wales Australia SPRINGER–PRAXIS BOOKS IN GEOPHYSICAL SCIENCES SUBJECT ADVISORY EDITOR: Philippe Blondel, C.Geol., F.G.S., Ph.D., M.Sc., Senior Scientist, Department of Physics, University of Bath, Bath, UK ISBN 978-3-540-74273-9 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York Springer is part of Springer-Science + Business Media (springer.com) Library of Congress Control Number: 2007937938 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. # Praxis Publishing Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2008 Printed in Germany The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the