Tsunamis are water waves triggered by impulsive geologic events such as
sea floor deformation, landslides, slumps, subsidence, volcanic
eruptions and bolide impacts. Tsunamis can inflict significant damage
and casualties both nearfield and after evolving over long propagation
distances and impacting distant coastlines. Tsunamis can also effect
geomorphologic changes along the coast. Understanding tsunami generation
and evolution is of paramount importance for protecting coastal
population at risk, coastal structures and the natural environment.
Accurately and reliably predicting the initial waveform and the
associated coastal effects of tsunamis remains one of the most vexing
problems in geophysics, and -with few exceptions- has resisted routine
numerical computation or data collection solutions. While ten years ago,
it was believed that the generation problem was adequately understood
for useful predictions, it is now clear that it is not, especially
nearfield. By contrast, the runup problem earlier believed intractable
is now well understood for all but the most extreme breaking wave
events.