Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.
Office: 607-254-8093
E-Mail: bpf2@cornell.edu
COLOMBO, SRI LANKA -- Philip Liu, Cornell University professor of civil and environmental engineering, will give a preliminary report Saturday, Jan. 15, on the run-up height of the Asian tsunami along the coastal areas of Sri Lanka. Liu will speak at a seminar, "2004 Tsunami and the Impact on Sri Lanka," at 2 p.m. in Committee Room B at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH) in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Since Jan. 10 Liu has been leading a U.S.-funded scientific research team examining the magnitude of the Dec. 26 tsunami. By Jan. 15, team members plan to have examined inundation areas in the eastern and southern sections of Sri Lanka and to have estimated wave heights, determined the precise arrival time of the tsunami, scoured the area for geological evidence and sediment deposits and examined structural damage.
Research team members Costas Synolakis, professor of civil engineering at the University of Southern California, and Bruce Jaffe, research oceanographer, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), will join Liu in presenting preliminary findings at the seminar. Professor C.B. Dissanayake and senior lecturers H.A.H. Jayasena and Rohana Chandrajith, all of the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, will discuss the geological implications of the tsunami.
Liu's primary work at Cornell, in Ithaca, N.Y., is in tsunami and wave propagation. He helped develop the Pacific Ocean tsunami warning system. His research centers on understanding the characteristics of ocean-wave climates and the way that waves interact with coastlines and coastal structures.
The seminar is being organized by Soil Tech Ltd. of Sri Lanka, the Alumni Association of the University of Peradeniya, in collaboration with the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, the USGS and the National Science Foundation.
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