comparison of FDM and FVM model performance for tsunami wave propagation near east coast of Korea

Tsunami wave height was reported over 30 cm in southern coast of South Korea by the tsunami triggered by 2010 Chile and 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. There was no action of forecasting of tsunami attack due to the absence of tsunami warning system in South Korea. Although Korea is relatively safe region from tsunami, it is important to build up a predicting capability of global tsunami in Korea, since its severe destructive nature.

In this study, we conduct COMCOT (Cornell Multi-grid Coupled Tsunami Model) based on FDM (Finite Difference Method) and FVCOM (Finite Volume Community Ocean Model) based on FVM (Finite Volume Method) for comparing model performance and suitability of tsunami forecast system. COMCOT is relatively easy to setup for modelling and it has not been parallelized, whereas FVCOM needs some effort for grid configuration and it has parallelized system. The comparison factors are tsunami reaching time, and model simulation time.

As a result, both models show good results in the arrival time of the first tsunami wave. But in clock time of simulation, COMCOT needs more time than FVCOM, if COMCOT use more than 3 sublayer for the simulation. Depending the matter of interest, FDM and FVM shows its advantage in simulating tsunami. For the simulation of regional inundation problem, FDM shows good performance. On the other hand, FVM shows more capability for global tsunami forecast.