Tsunami evacuation simulation - case studies for tsunami mitigation at Indonesia, Thailand and Japan

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2011 Great East Japan tsunami left several lessons for future events. Both tsunami events confirmed the importance of early evacuation, tsunami awareness and the need of developing much more resilient communities with effective evacuation plans. To support reconstruction activities and efforts on developing resilient communities, tsunami evacuation simulation are applied to tsunami mitigation and evacuation planning. In this paper we highlight the importance of tsunami evacuation simulation as a tool in disaster management. Case studies of application of a tsunami evacuation model developed by the authors are presented here. Applications in Indonesia, Thailand and Japan tsunami prone areas are reported. In addition, challenges and future research directions for tsunami evacuation modeling are briefly discussed.