Potential impacts of the Brunei Slide tsunami over East Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam

A giant submarine landslide known as the Brunei Slide was recently discovered in the North West Borneo Trough. This discovery suggests the potential of a landslide-generated tsunami by submarine landslide in the South China Sea region. This paper attempts to model the generation and propagation of this tsunami and assess its potential impacts on affected coastal areas, with particular reference to East Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam. The landslide generation model proposed by Watts (1998) is used to describe the characteristic motion of landslide moving along the inclined plane, with the center of mass motion parallel to the inclined plane. The tsunami amplitude and free surface shape are derived from empirical formulations. The tsunami source generated by the in-house tsunami generation model TUNA-SL will provide initial conditions for the subsequent tsunami wave propagation model COMCOT. Numerical results indicate that Western Sabah will begin to receive tsunami waves at 50 m water depths in 0.4 h or more, with estimated tsunami heights of up to 24 m. Meanwhile, Northeast Sarawak and Brunei Darussalam will receive initial tsunami waves within 1.0-1.5 h, with estimated tsunami heights of up to 14 m and 17 m, respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.