Article TOWARDS THE NEXT GENERATION OF TSUNAMI IMPACT SIMULATIONS Simone Marras 1,‡ , Kyle T. Mandli 2,‡ 1 New Jersey Institute of Technology; smarras@njit.edu 2 Columbia University; kyle.mandli@columbia.edu * Correspondence: smarras@njit.edu ‡ These authors contributed equally to this work. Received: date; Accepted: date; Published: date Abstract: The approach to tsunami modeling and simulation has changed in the past few years more than it had in the previous two decades. This brief review describes why this modeling shift is happening and attempts to provide some insight into the future of computational tsunami research. Keywords: Tsunami Modeling; Tsunami Simulations; Numerical Methods 1. Introduction Figure 1. Pieces of the T ohoku multi-billion dollar tsunami protection wall after a level-2 tsunami his the coasts of Japan in 2011. While each individual concrete section of the wall did not suffer significant damage, the erosion at the foundations of the wall happened so quickly that the concrete barrier simply fell (Picture from [1].) The failure of a multi-billion dollar wall designed to protect the T ohoku coasts of Japan (Figure 1) from a level-2 tsunami (i.e. infrequent but highly destructive) in 2011 has triggered an important debate about alternative approaches to tsunami risk reduction. This debate is on-going and has attracted broad media attention worldwide (Reuters [2], The Guardian [3], The Economist [4], The New York Times [5], Wired [6]). The question whether a wall is the best solution to tsunami mitigation lies in the significant expense required for a wall that does not necessarily guarantee protection from big tsunamis. A massive concrete wall also suggests a misleading sense of full protection that may prevent the affected communities from prompt evacuation [7], as sadly experienced in T ohoku. Even when cost Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 19 October 2020 doi:10.20944/preprints202010.0394.v1 © 2020 by the author(s). Distributed under a Creative Commons CC BY license.