Abstract:
More than two thirds of the Sri Lankan coastline got affected from the December
2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Field surveys conducted clearly indicate that some of
the cities in the western coast of Sri Lanka in the shadow of the incident tsunami
experienced significantly high damage similar to that of the eastern coast which
was directly facing the incident tsunami. Destruction caused by the tsunami in the
western coast was patchy and the cities like Galle and Hikkaduwa could be
identified as the worst affected. In the case of Galle, the Bay and Headland
combination would have increased the height and speed of the Tsunami wave and
the damages accordingly. Even without such prominent coastal features
Hikkaduwa experienced a similar scale of damages. This led to the investigations
in identifying the damage mechanisms of Hikkaduwa where inundation and wave
heights were as much as 5-10 times of the surrounding areas of the south west
coast. Such complex mechanism of damages can be interpreted via results of
Numerical Modeling and analysis of the existing coastal features in Hikkaduwa.
