Estimating earthquake and landslide tsunami hazard for the New Zealand coast

Abstract

Tsunamis are a significant hazard on the New Zealand coast, with historic events being mostly generated by submarine earthquakes and landslides. Historical data combined with numerical modelling provides the best estimates of potential tsunami behaviour, but requires more data than is normally available for New Zealand. Simple parametric models provide useful estimates of maximum tsunami amplitude for seismic and landslide generation mechanisms, and a viable approach to characterise potential tsunami hazard.