A tsunami is a destructive natural phenomenon, which can cause enormous infrastructure damage and human losses. Its danger is related both to the impossibility of predicting the time, strength, and location of an underwater earthquake leading to a tsunami and to the specifics of people's settlement.
Most people live in coastal areas, which are highly susceptible to destruction from this phenomenon. However, modern achievements in the field of marine modeling enable us to the assessment of the risks, that potential tsunamis carry, using mathematical modeling. Also, marine models can be used in operational forecasts, which allows for predicting the most important characteristics of tsunamis when an underwater earthquake has already occurred.
The operational tsunami forecast system is aimed at early warning and prevention of human losses, as well as minimizing property and critical infrastructure damage. The forecast system is based on the analysis of seismic observations of earthquake epicenter under the ocean floor and the subsequent assimilation of earthquake data into an effective operational model. The pause between the earthquake and the generated tsunami varies on a wide space-time scale (from minutes to days). In most cases, the margin of time makes it possible to predict the occurrence and moment of tsunami arrival, its height, speed, and propagation time.