Proceedings of The National Conference On Undergraduate Research (NCUR) 2006 The University of North Carolina at Asheville Asheville, North

Carolina April 6--8, 2006

Tsunami Visualization: Challenging General Misconceptions

1

Matthew Christoper Brown and 2Jon Gabriel Clapper

Department of 1Computer Science and 2Multimedia Arts & Sciences The University of North Carolina at Asheville One University Heights Asheville, North Carolina 28804 USA Faculty Adviser: Ms. Susan Reiser Abstract
Duke Universitys Dr. Richard Barber noted the inaccurate Sumatra tsumani visualizations in the news media1. The way tsunamis hit land is not depicted accurately. The traditional view of a tsunami is that of a large, rolling wave hitting the coastline. Dr. Barbers video evidence suggests that the damage caused by a tsunami is produced more in the form of a slab of water pushing across the surface of the land rather than a massive wave crashing down from above. Through the use of existing three-dimensional software packages, simulations were developed taking Dr. Barbers theory into account. A contrived model of a generic tsunami will be used as a proving ground for the methods used, and then terrain data collected from the Sumatra Tsunami will be used to provide real-world evidence of the theory. Existing simulations will also be studied in order to provide background information and structure for this studys processes and methods. The tsunami simulation will be created by utilizing the underlying physical processes of a tsunami rather than simply creating a contrived animation based on the assumptions gathered from mere visual evidence. Through the creation of a simulation that attempts to model the behavior of a tsunami realistically, this study will provide the scientific community with a model that can be reused in the future. Keywords: Tsunami, Visualization, Challenging

1. Introduction
Dr. Barber's hypothesis was verified in the early stages of preliminary research and was found to have been widely accepted for a number of years2. The focus of the research changed to an investigation of the influence coast topography has on the tsunami as it strikes. The coastlines considered were also shifted from the specific to more general examples with a goal of categorizing behaviors observed. These explorations utilized an open-source threedimensional modeling and animation software called Blender. The Blender component of interest was the fluid simulation engine El'Beem which is still in its alpha phase. This project is among the first to use El'Beem for physical simulations rather than artistic expression, which in turn lead to an interest in the fluid solver itself.

2. Basic Properties of Waves and Tsunamis

The tsunami's behavior as a wave is key to understanding problems in predicting where the waves will strike, and to what extent. The most basic properties of waves include wavelength, the distance between repetition in space, amplitude or height, and period, the amount of time between repetitions in time. In addition there are properties of interactions between waves and their environment like refraction, reflection, and diffraction. An important misconception to address is the idea that waves are displacing water as they propagate--the water particles themselves move in nearly circular orbits throughout the wave cycle. It is energy that is propagated, and there is very little net motion of water particles in the direction of wave travel except during the breaking of the wave on

shore3. The most commonly observed waves in the ocean are wind waves, which are caused by actions at the interface of air and water. Wind waves contain most of their energy near the surface, and their strength is very mutable subject to wind conditions4. At a certain depth below the sea surface the motion due to waves created by even the fiercest hurricanes are unfelt5. Though they have the misnomer "tidal waves," the cause of tsunamis is unrelated to the tides. Tsunamis arise as a result of rapid disturbances in the sea floor elevations due to underwater land slides, undersea volcanic activity, and upthrusting or down- thrusting of the sea floor due to earthquakes6. The moving earth displaces water resulting in the ocean equalizing pressure by duplicating this configuration at the surface7. In the case of the upthrust it is a bulge on the ocean surface and for a downthrust a dip. The origins of the tsunami give its energy an extent from the sea floor to the sea surface, which means that it is effectively unchanged by most interactions except for large scale sea floor variations and the impact of striking large land masses8. The seismic activity that creates a tsunami causes it to radiate outward in concentric circles with wavelengths in the hundreds of kilometers9. Wave speed in deep water is proportional to wavelength, with longer wavelengths travels faster10. Wave speed (c) can be generally described using the equation c=gL/(2)tanh(2d/L) which is approximated by c=gL/(2) in deep water and c=gd (3) (2) (1)

in water depths much less than the wavelength, where L is wavelength in meters, d is water depth in meters, and g is acceleration due to gravity11. Due to their immense wavelengths, tsunamis always travel as a shallow water waves12. This means that tsunamis have wave speeds in the hundreds of kilometers. Tsunamis also lose energy inversely proportional to their length allowing them to travel great distances with little energy loss13. However, they are almost unnoticeable on the open ocean with wave heights comparable to those of wind waves. On open ocean their wave height is only around one meter, but as the speed of the wave slows in shallow water, the conservation of energy requires that the height must increase14. Tsunami height depends on the shelf topography at a given point: as a tsunami is slowed its height increases15. The front of the wave becomes slowed by friction and the back of the wave combines with the front lifting the waves higher16. Also as a tsunami begins to shoal, it bunches up and draws in water from along the shore17. This is not to say that tsunamis always take the form of the monstrous white capped waves portrayed in art and popular media. Tsunami properties depend much on the local characteristics of the coast. Certain conditions cause the tsunami to strike in the appearance of "a sudden and rapid rising of the tide"18. Due to their immense wavelengths, tsunamis can travel around islands causing inundation on the backsides as well19 . Before tsunami wave crashes, a considerable amount of the wave's energy is spent in the foaming of the breaking wave, as well as displacing sand and other parts of the beach terrain. This means that the extent of the damage done by a tsunami impact is partially due to the ability of the beach components to absorb wave energy20. The slope of the beach also determines the amount of energy that is reflected back to the ocean, with shallower slopes reflecting less energy21. Through similar properties of reflection, low lying regions surrounded by cliffs or bodies of water are more susceptible22. The property of refraction in tsunamis is especially prominent in shallow water as parts of the wave travel over regions where the ratio of depths change greatly from values near unity according to the equation sin1/sin2 = c1/c2 = gd1/gd2 = d1/d2 (4)

The effect is a tendency to "'swing' the wave crest to an alignment parallel to the depth contours"23. These values are used to determine "wave rays" which show the direction of water movement for waves traveling toward the coast from the usual direction of approach24. The rays can be used in a limited scope to predict where waves will constructively or destructively interfere. Since the directions of the centers of seismic activity are known, along with distance from shore, it should be possible to construct wave rays for use in the predictions of areas expected to receive the greatest wave heights. Tsunamis, as waves, are also subject to the phenomenon of destructive and constructive interference. For example, it is known that tsunamis created by volcanic activity can interfere with the

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vibrations of air due to the eruption25. The effect can be so extreme as to cause the rebuilding of waves after passing through island chains. It has also generally been observed that tsunamis passing into harbors interfere to produce more powerful waves26. Tsunamis are difficult to model because of the infrequent opportunities to study them, as well as the immense scale on which the event takes place. The tsunami will propagate for hundreds of kilometers over ocean whose depth and sea-floor characteristics are either unknown, or not known to a high enough resolution to be useful in simulation. Computation times also limit the process of developing a realistic wave in terms of the amount of time in the cycle of reviewing and reformulating simulations required for running even the simple visualizations attempted in this project

2.1 Cellular Automata

Cellular automata are usually represented as filled-in grid cells of an n dimensional grid. They are created, moved, mutated, and destroyed according to a specified algorithm27. For example, the rules of some of the simplest onedimensional (1D) cellular automata involve looking at the colors of the current cell and those to the left and right then producing a new cell in the next step based on the three values.

Figure 1. Depiction of rule 3028. Copyright MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource, 2006. Used with permission.

Figure 2. Rule 30 after several generations29. Copyright MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource, 2006. Used with permission. Despite the simple rules that govern their existence, cellular automata are capable of complex behavior, which suggest to some researchers their ability to be used in modeling physical phenomena30. Cellular automata have long been thought of as being "discrete idealizations of the PDEs [partial differential equations] often used to describe natural systems"31. The discrete particle model is able to behave as a continuous medium due to the large number of cells involved32. They have been shown to be successful in areas that produce great difficulties when dealt with by conventional mathematical modeling (PDEs), especially in regard to complex fluid flows33. This is in part due to observations that the reliance of complex behavior on initial conditions in such situations is the exception rather than the rule. Small changes due to initial conditions in cellular automata die out rapidly in accordance to the behavior of real flowing fluids34. It is important to understand that "the complex behavior of the automaton emerges from the interaction of the cells, and not, for example, by describing system properties as functions of space and time"35.

2.2 Blender's Fluid System

Blender's fluid system, El'Beem, is an extension of the fluid solver developed by Nils Threy originally for the purpose of simulating metal foams. Threy's solver implements the lattice-BGK model which evolved from lattice gas cellular automata 36. It is fully compliant with the Navier-Stokes conditions and has performed successfully in standard tests like the breaking dam problem. The discretized nature of cellular automata make them simple and efficient for representing fluids computationally, as well as easier to optimize and parallel process 37. The lattice used was D3Q19, meaning 3 dimensions and 19 lattice velocities. Particles of the fluid are only allowed to move along one of the 19 lattice velocities, with 0 representing no movement in that particular step. The overall behavior of the simulation will behave like an incompressible fluid (constant density), though the density does fluctuate

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during the simulation. The first of the two steps of the simulation is the stream step during which particles are moved throughout the grid. The second step is the collide step which does the calculations for colliding particles. The stream step copies the distribution functions to the adjacent cell in the direction of movement. If this was done on a single grid there is a risk of overwriting distribution functions of cells yet to be assessed, so two grids are used. The collide step changes the distribution of particles within the cell by changing velocity values. For example, a cell that has fluid moving along positive x direction will have larger positive x velocities and less negative x velocities 38. The next cell in the direction of increasing x will receive larger amounts of the particle distribution in the next stream step. The fluid has additional rules in the simulation that arise from boundary interactions and external forces. This is generally the no-slip condition where the fluid has zero velocity and "can be imagined as reflecting the particle distribution functions at the boundary" 39. For external forces such as gravity or objects pushing a fluid, an acceleration is added to the appropriate velocity in each cell.

3. Blender
Blender, the three-dimensional (3D) animation package used in this project, was originally an in-house development tool for a Dutch 3D animation studio called NeoGeo. Ton Roosendaal, one of the founders of NeoGeo later founded a new company called Not a Number with the goal to develop Blender as a fully capable, professional grade 3D animation software package that was freely available to the general public. Today, Roosendaals goal has been realized through the not for profit Blender Foundation with Blender released to the public under the GNU General Public License (GPL)40. Being released under the GNU GPL puts Blender in the category of open source software. This means that Blenders source code and all documentation is freely available with community development and documentation enhancement highly encouraged. One of the main goals of the Blender Foundation is to provide worldwide access to 3D technology. Open source software is becoming increasingly prevalent even in the workplace, with more and more people realizing the powerful potential of community developed and moderated applications. Blender is one of the successful examples of open source products that are flourishing through online community development. Blender utilized heavily throughout the 3D animation community. There are many 3D artists using Blender as the principal tool for their work. It was used to create 3D storyboards in the early production of Spider-Man 2. Other applications include character animation, product modeling, 3D graphics for the web, visual effects and post production, and architectural modeling41. Blender, being open source, is also highly cost effective. Blenders interface has advantages and disadvantages. One of the most advantageous features of the interface is the idea of separate editing modes. The two main editing modes are object and edit. Object mode is used to manipulate the object as a whole, mainly used to move, scale, or rotate the object for the purposes of animation. Edit mode allows one to edit the shape of the object itself by manipulating the vertices that make up the polygon mesh. Keeping these two modes separate and avoids confusion when working on the two separate tasks of modeling and animating an object. Another main advantages of Blenders user interface is that it is completely customizable. All of the keyboard and mouse commands can be remapped to suit the preferences of the individual user, rather than having control of the interface tied down to what was pre-decided by the developer. The actual visual layout of the GUI is also fully customizable. Blenders interface does have disadvantages. Blender, like any other 3D package, has a massive number of tools, menus, and options that all need to fit somewhere on the screen. Blender also relies on tying a lot of these options and features to keyboard shortcut keys which can be cumbersome and difficult to remember. Blenders fluid system, El'Beem, though still very new and not robust, is fairly intuitive and easy to use. The system is set up by using different objects as the domain, obstacle, or fluid. The domain determines a bounding box where the fluid simulation is allowed to occur. Obstacle objects interact with and displace the fluid. For example, in this project the coastline is an obstacle, through which the fluid cannot pass. Finally, the fluid object becomes the actual fluid when the simulation is run. This system makes basic simulations fairly easy to set up, and allow one to give specific parameters to each of the three types of objects. As previously mentioned LBM, as implemented in Blender, is still in the very early stages and does have its problems. The boundaries of the simulation as set by the domain and its interaction with any obstacles and the resolution of the actual fluid can sometimes cause major problems resulting in the simulation not rendering properly or crashing the program all together. Due to these issues, as well as the extremely substantial amount of time required to run any simulation, achieving desired results can take an inordinate amount of time.

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4. Results
Though the visual results of this experiment were limited and restricted by the current limitations of Blender and the LBM fluid system, they are positive and promising for the future. El'Beem was to simulate the differences in how a tsunami wave strikes the shore by using simple models illustrating a shallow coastline and a steep coastline.

Figure 3. Four-step sequence in shallow coastline simulation

Figure 4. Four-step sequence in steep coastline simulation

5. Defense of Methods of Investigation

Computer investigations of events such as tsunamis are important because it is difficult and far more costly to construct physical models. Part of the difficulty comes from the effects of surface tension on the water which dominate at smaller scales--capillary waves with wavelengths around 1.7 cm42. This means that there is a lower bound of the scaling of wave-height to contend with in approximating the behavior of tsunamis as they travel on an open ocean. In turn, the lower bound of the wavelength of the scaled tsunami is far larger than is practical in a laboratory setting. In addition to problems of scale, the static and immobile nature of a physical model make it ill suited to address a phenomenon that occurs in a multitude of settings across the globe. Computational models exist without being tied to a physical location and can thus be more easily used by local scientists who more intimately know the geography and other relevant data of effected regions. This non locality of the simulation also aids the

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collaboration of specialists who, for various reasons, may not be able to convene to do studies at the site of a physical model. The laboratory model is also limited in scope--it is not easily extensible to other topics of study. As a computational fluid system is more fully developed it will likely see use for commercial and industrial purposes and its relative modularity makes it easy to incorporate into other computer applications involving physical simulation.

6. Conclusion and Future Considerations

As an open source product, Blender has a large amount of enthusiastic support behind it. This project has tested the limitations of a very young fluid system and Blenders capabilities are not yet robust enough to accomplish all the goals of the research. Despite current setbacks, through the open source ideal and Blenders support community, it is assured that in the future Blender and LBM will be better suited to accomplish these goals. Currently in Blender the incoming wave does not have the ability to deform the shore as it hits, nor does it have the ability to "push" obstacles it interacts with. This is due, in part, to the difference in the way that physics is handled in the cellular automata fluid compared to the traditionally implemented Blender physics engine. Once physical interactions between fluids and soft bodies (non-rigid solids) are implemented Blender simulations will be able to show the effect that shore distortion has on the energy of the breaking wave, as well as providing a view on how more malleable coastal terrains (sand, mud, etc.) change in response to a tsunami. This may be important in evaluating damage to local surf-zone ecology and damage to human coastal infrastructure. Such interactions could also provide clues as to whether a particular stretch of coast becomes more susceptible to or more resilient against future tsunami impacts. A "pushing" wave could provide simulations of the wave striking onshore structures which could lead to revisions of building codes to ensure greater human safety. Once the way that tsunamis interact with local shore topology is studied in a wide variety of locations it may be possible to develop efficient warning systems with sensing equipment installed with coverage proportional to the risk factor of an area. An ultimate goal would be to use such information to devise ways of dissipating the tsunami's energy before striking human settlements.

7. References
1. Richard Barber, "Tsunami 101." Powerpoint Presentation, 2005. 2. Douglas Myles, The Great Waves, (Suffolk: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1986), 35. 3. Joan Brown et al., Waves, Tides and Shallow-Water Processes, (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991), 8. 4. Ellen J. Prager, Furious Earth: The Science and Nature of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 173. 5. Joan Brown et al., Waves, Tides and Shallow-Water Processes, (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991). 6. Douglas Myles, The Great Waves, (Suffolk: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1986). 7. Ibid. 35. 8. Ellen J. Prager, Furious Earth: The Science and Nature of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000). 9. Joan Brown et al., Waves, Tides and Shallow-Water Processes, (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991), 23. 10. Ibid. 11. 11. Ibid. 17-18. 12. Ibid. 34-35. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 34. 15. Douglas Myles, The Great Waves, (Suffolk: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1986), 32-33. 16. Ibid. 35. 17. Ellen J. Prager, Furious Earth: The Science and Nature of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 177. 18. Douglas Myles, The Great Waves, (Suffolk: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1986), 35. 19. Ellen J. Prager, Furious Earth: The Science and Nature of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 177. 20. Joan Brown et al., Waves, Tides and Shallow-Water Processes, (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991), 29. 21. Ibid. 29. 22. Ellen J. Prager, Furious Earth: The Science and Nature of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000).

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23. Joan Brown et al., Waves, Tides and Shallow-Water Processes, (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991), 23. 24. Ibid. 25-27. 25. Douglas Myles, The Great Waves, (Suffolk: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1986). 26. Ibid. 169. 27. Eric W. Weisstein. "Elementary Cellular Automaton." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ElementaryCellularAutomaton.html, 2005. Date URL accessed: March 28, 2006. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Stephen Wolfram, Cellular Automata and Complexity: Collected Papers, (New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994), 412. 32. Ibid. 327. 33. Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, (Wolfram Media, Inc., 2002), 382. 34. Ibid. 382. 35. Nils Thurey, A Single-Phase Free-Surface Lattice Boltzmann Method, (Friedrich-Alexander-Universitt Erlangen-Nrnberg, 2003), 3. 36. Ibid. 1. 37. Ibid. 2. 38. Ibid. 6-7. 39. Ibid. 8. 40. Ton Roosendaal, Blender3d.org-History. http://www.blender3d.org/cms/History.53.0.html, 2004. Date URL accessed: April 3, 2006. 41. Johannes Langlotz, Blender3d.org-Applications. http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Applications.57.0.html, 2004. Date URL accessed: April 3, 2006. 42. Joan Brown et al., Waves, Tides and Shallow-Water Processes, (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991), 8.

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