Wellington regional tsunami hazard scoping project Technical Report
- Author
- GeoEnvironmental Consultants
- Year
- 2001
- Publisher / Organisation
- Wellington Regional Council
- Pages
- 119
- Summary
- This scoping project provides a summary of tsunami, and tsunami hazards and risk for the Wellington Region. Overall, the tsunami hazard is not as great as in some countries, but on the other hand it is similar to some regions commonly perceived to have a problem with tsunami, such as Indonesia and the islands of Hawaii. The perception that the hazard is low is probably because New Zealand has not experienced a large locally-generated tsunami since 1947AD (or 1855AD for the Wellington Region), or a large distantly-generated tsunami since the 1960AD Chilean earthquake. It is likely that a tsunami will occur soon. Further, the growing data on paleoseismicity and palaeotsunami in New Zealand indicate that the Cook Strait region, at least, is periodically subject to large magnitude events. While tsunami generated by earthquakes (possibly in association with landslides) are considered an extreme hazard, we know little about the submarine landslide hazards of Cook Strait and the Hikurangi Trough, and urgent work is needed to address this issue.