7 
2 Selected literature and web sites 
Not a single tsunami warning has been issued since the beginning of official water level 
predictions for the North Sea coast, i.e. since 1879, when the first tide table was published. 
The operational models for water level predictions run at the BSH thus were not designed for 
tsunami simulations and those in charge of the predictions had no experience in tsunami 
forecasting. Therefore, some books are introduced below which discuss the subject briefly 
but in sufficient detail. Also the web sites listed in chapter 10 were chosen under the same 
aspect. Of particular interest in this regard are the risk assessments and reports provided by 
other North Sea countries. More specific work is referred to in the text. 
In the aftermath of the disastrous 1960 tsunami in Chile, the International Union of Geodesy 
and Geophysics (IUGG) held an international meeting parallel to a conference on tsunami 
hydrodynamics. The proceedings of the conference are still worth reading. In his keynote 
address, Cox (1961) summed up the status of tsunami research at the time. The final 
resolution is particularly interesting (Resolutions 1961). Although tsunami events were 
considered to be primarily a problem of countries bordering the Pacific Ocean, the IUGG 
recommended that European countries should investigate the possibility of tsunami 
occurrence in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. 
40 years later, tsunami research was still getting little attention in Europe. McNeil, in the 
“Encyclopaedia of Ocean Sciences“ (2001), dedicates less than half a page to the subject of 
tsunami: 
„Tsunamis are long-period waves generated primarily by submarine earthquakes. The name 
comes from a Japanese word meaning ,harbour waves 1 , however, it is now used in the 
scientific literature to exclusively describe seismic sea waves. 
Tectonic activity in the seafloor creates a vertical movement in the seafloor and a resultant 
vertical movement across a wide area of the sea’s surface. This leads to the formation of a 
train of long-period waves. Periods of over an hour are not uncommon. These waves can 
travel very large distances from the earthquake’s epicenter and, as they near the coast, their 
amplitude is increased by local topographic features. 
Considerable damage to property and loss of life have been recorded as the result of 
tsunamis. Warning systems have been developed mainly around the Pacific Ocean. 
Provided the epicenter and the time of occurrence are known good estimations can be made 
of the time the tsunami will reach coastal areas. “ 
The “Encyclopaedia of Physical Science and Technology“ contains a good and concise 
description (15 pages) of subjects ranging from the “Characteristics of Tsunamis“ to 
“Tsunami Forecasting“ (Ward 2002). 
Another summary is provided by Camfield (1990) in the Handbook of Coastal and Ocean 
Engineering. 
A book that has been widely read among experts after the tsunami of December 2004 is 
“Tsunami - The Underrated Hazard“ (Bryant 2001). When compiling section 3 of this report, 
much of the information about possible tsunami causes was taken from this book. Especially 
chapter 2 of the book, entitled “Tsunami Dynamics“, is worth reading. 
A precise description of analytical wave theory and the approximations on which it is based 
has been provided by Peregine (1972). More recent theories are discussed by Liu et al. 
(2002). Mader (2004) provides a good compilation of such theories, together with a survey of 
numerical models used in tsunami research. The CD enclosed with the book contains some 
smaller programmes and the results of many tsunami simulations, e.g. the Lisbon tsunami, 
and tsunami caused by meteoritic impacts in the North Atlantic Ocean (also on the Internet, 
10.5: MAD04). It also contains all papers published in the journal „Science of Tsunami 
Hazards“ from 1982 to 2003 (on the Internet, 10: STH82 and 10: STH06 for more recent 
volumes). A paper dealing with the tsunami of December 2004, which focuses on early