2006 Volume 50 Pages 1423-1428
Male' Island, the capital of Maldives, was hit by Indian Ocean Tsunami on December 26 2004, but the damage was less severe in comparison with other islands in Maldives and neighbor countries. One of the major reasons was attributed to the solid seawalls surrounding the island. In this study, the effects of the seawalls were inspected by numerical simulation, in which the finest grid size was 3.33m for the whole Male' Island. The results indicated that Male' Island without seawalls would have been hit by run-up flows with higher energy several times, especially on the east coast facing to the tsunami source. Thus it is certain that the existing seawalls reduced the damage of Male' Island as long as this event. In fact, the maximum tsunami height in Maldives, however, was relatively small, approx. 2m, so that the existing seawalls worked well against the tsunami. So it may be needed to implement other software methods; forecast and alert system, evacuation guideline system etc., as well as shore protection structures in preparation for larger scale tsunamis.
