2009 HiMCM B题特等奖学生论文下载2340

2009 HiMCM B题特等奖学生论文下载2340

 

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论文摘要如下：

 

This year, a massive earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale caused a monstrous tsunami that hit Samoa, American Samoa, and Tonga, claiming at least 1,000 total lives. In 2004, another tsunami, caused by a 9.0 earthquake, killed over 200,000 throughout the countries of the Indian Ocean. Avoiding these natural disasters is a top priority among geophysicists, and thus far, they have attempted to model these incredible forces.

 

In this study, our goal was to compare the devastation of potential tsunamis caused by varying earthquakes on seven different cities. Our model takes into account two of the largest factors in measuring the strength of a tsunami when it hits land: the energy from the earthquake itself and the distance between the epicenter and the coast, where devastation is proportional to energy but inversely proportional to distance.

 

The main advantage of our model is its simplicity in comparison to others. Most of those use the topography of the surrounding ocean, geography of the bay the city lies in, and the stress released by the fault during the earthquake. None of these make for a simple equation. On the other hand, ours strikes a balance between accuracy and simplicity, and even though we aimed to optimize simplicity, ours is still very accurate.

 

In confirming our model, we used data from four different earthquakes: the 2009 Samoan earthquake to create the model and three others to reinforce it. These three included both Aceh's and Sri Lanka's death tolls from the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and Flores's death toll from the 1992 Flores Sea earthquake.

 

To execute our model, we used five scenarios. The first scenario used data from the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, which we related to how far inland water from the tsunami came. Therefore, we measured the death toll in each city as if the water had came in to shore two kilometers. The second and fourth scenarios were computed using the largest earthquake ever recorded (9.5) and the smallest one that ever produced a deadly tsunami (5.2) respectively. The third used a value for the average earthquake that produced a deadly tsunami, while the fifth and final found the smallest sized earthquake that would displace only one person.

 

To summarize our results, Hilo would be entirely demolished but Juneau would be left comparitively unharmed in scenario one due to their respective low and high land areas. For equal sized earthquakes (scenarios two through five), Juneau would be hit the hardest but Hilo would be hit the least. Oddly, the smallest earthquake-causing tsunami killed about 38 times as many people as expected (3 observed/.08 expected); we contributed this to some special incident in the actual case, such as evacuation.

 

So while our model aimed to maximize simplicity rather than exactness, it still provides a very accurate representation of tsunamis hitting various cities in the United States.

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