https://github.com/sysadmindoc/tsunamisimulator
3D-globe desktop simulator for tsunamis from asteroid impacts, nuclear bursts, earthquakes, and landslides. Real physics (Ward-Asphaug, Synolakis, Okada, Glasstone-Dolan) + peer-reviewed presets (Chicxulub, Tohoku, Lituya Bay). Tauri 2 + React + CesiumJS + Rust.
https://github.com/sysadmindoc/tsunamisimulator
desktop-app rust windows
Last synced: 17 days ago
JSON representation
3D-globe desktop simulator for tsunamis from asteroid impacts, nuclear bursts, earthquakes, and landslides. Real physics (Ward-Asphaug, Synolakis, Okada, Glasstone-Dolan) + peer-reviewed presets (Chicxulub, Tohoku, Lituya Bay). Tauri 2 + React + CesiumJS + Rust.
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/sysadmindoc/tsunamisimulator
- Owner: SysAdminDoc
- License: mit
- Created: 2026-05-25T03:20:43.000Z (about 2 months ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2026-06-26T17:58:36.000Z (19 days ago)
- Last Synced: 2026-06-26T18:15:30.495Z (19 days ago)
- Topics: desktop-app, rust, windows
- Language: TypeScript
- Size: 6.38 MB
- Stars: 1
- Watchers: 0
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- Changelog: CHANGELOG.md
- License: LICENSE
- Roadmap: ROADMAP.md
- Notice: NOTICE
Awesome Lists containing this project
README
# TsunamiSimulator
[](./CHANGELOG.md)
[](./LICENSE)
[](#install)
[](#architecture)
[](./docs/science)
> A scientifically grounded 3D-globe desktop application for simulating tsunami generation, propagation, and first-order coastal effects from asteroid impacts, nuclear detonations (atmospheric and underwater), seafloor earthquakes, and subaerial landslides — with peer-reviewed historical presets like Chicxulub (66 Ma), Tōhoku 2011, Indian Ocean 2004, and Lituya Bay 1958.
This is the **NukeMap for tsunamis** — but with a 3D globe, peer-reviewed source models, a coarse bathymetry-aware shallow-water solver, and presets you can scrub through frame-by-frame.
---
## Visual tour
| Historical preset + source readout | Live SWE playback |
|---|---|
|  |  |
| Side-by-side comparison | Scenario builder + globe pick | Citations |
|---|---|---|
|  |  |  |
---
## Why this exists
Existing tools each do one piece:
- **[NukeMap](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)** — nuclear airburst effects only, 2D map, no water.
- **[Asteroid Launcher](https://neal.fun/asteroid-launcher/)** — fun, 2D map, no propagating tsunami.
- **[Purdue "Impact: Earth!"](https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/)** — accurate formulas, single-point readout, no animation.
- **[GeoClaw](http://depts.washington.edu/clawpack/geoclaw/)** / **[COMCOT](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374553562)** / **[MOST](https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/news-story/first-global-tsunami-simulation-chicxulub-asteroid-impact-66-million-years-ago)** — operational accuracy, Fortran/Python, no consumer UI.
`TsunamiSimulator` combines them: **peer-reviewed source physics + consumer-grade interactive globe**. Pick a source (asteroid, nuke, fault, slide), drop it anywhere on Earth, and watch a shallow-water solution propagate over the app's coarse offline bathymetry, estimate runup at named coastal points, and produce first-order inundation discs. Optional Cesium World Bathymetry improves visual terrain only; it is not the backend solver grid.
---
## Features (current build + roadmap)
### Source models (energy → initial water-surface displacement)
| Source | Status | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| **Asteroid / comet impact** | ✅ formulas wired | Ward & Asphaug 2000 *Icarus* 145:64; Schmidt & Holsapple 1982 |
| **Underwater nuclear** | ✅ formulas wired | Glasstone & Dolan 1977; Le Méhauté 1996; DNA 1996 (5% energy → wave) |
| **Atmospheric / surface nuclear (ocean)** | ✅ formulas wired | Van Dorn et al. 1968; Adams 1972 |
| **"Russia Poseidon" tsunami torpedo** | ✅ realistic mode | Skeptical physics — 360° dispersion, ~5% efficiency |
| **Earthquake (Okada fault dislocation)** | ✅ full Okada I-term wired | Okada 1985; Mansinha & Smylie 1971 |
| **Subaerial landslide** | ✅ Heller–Hager 2D channel | Fritz & Hager 2001 (Lituya); Slingerland & Voight |
| **Submarine landslide** | ✅ Watts 2003 best-fit | Watts et al. 2005 |
| **Volcanic caldera collapse** | 🔲 planned | Krakatoa 1883, Hunga Tonga 2022 |
### Propagation
- ✅ **Linear long-wave** (deep-ocean, fast preview).
- ✅ **Shallow-water equations** — depth-averaged 2D leapfrog with `rayon`
row-parallel updates, Manning bottom friction, CFL-safe Δt, snapshots
rendered as PNG overlays on the Cesium globe.
- 🔲 **Boussinesq** for dispersive waves (impact-tsunami wavelengths shorter than ocean depth — important for Ward–Asphaug regime).
- 🔲 **Adaptive mesh refinement** (AMR) like GeoClaw — coarse far-field, fine coastal.
- ✅ **GPU compute** via `wgpu` behind the `gpu` feature flag, with CPU fallback when no adapter is available.
### Coastal inundation
- ✅ **Synolakis 1987 runup law** sampled at 60+ named coastal points,
rendered as colour-graded 3D bars on the globe.
- 🔲 **MOST-style wetting/drying** on bathymetric grid.
- ✅ **First-order inundation discs** from runup/slope estimates.
- 🔲 **Real flood polygons** rendered as GeoJSON overlays on Cesium.
### Presets (historical events with peer-reviewed parameters)
| Event | Date | Source type | Magnitude | Peak wave | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Chicxulub impact** | 66 Ma | Asteroid, 14 km dia | ~10⁸ Mt TNT | 4.5 km initial, 1.5 km @ 220 km | Range et al. 2022 *AGU Adv* |
| **Tōhoku** | 2011-03-11 | M 9.1 megathrust | — | 40 m runup | Mori et al. 2011 |
| **Indian Ocean** | 2004-12-26 | M 9.2 megathrust | — | 30 m runup, 230k dead | Synolakis et al. 2005 |
| **Lituya Bay** | 1958-07-09 | Rockslide, 30 M m³ | M 7.8 trigger | **524 m runup** | Fritz et al. 2001 |
| **Krakatoa** | 1883-08-27 | Caldera collapse | VEI 6 | 42 m | Choi et al. 2003 |
| **Storegga slide** | ~8150 BP | Submarine slide, 3000 km³ | — | 20 m+ in Scotland | Bondevik et al. 2005 |
| **Hunga Tonga** | 2022-01-15 | Submarine volcano | VEI 5–6 | 15 m local + atmospheric Lamb wave | Carvajal et al. 2022 |
| **Eltanin** | 2.51 Ma | Asteroid, ~1 km dia | South Pacific | Globally significant | Gersonde et al. 1997 |
| **Hypothetical Cumbre Vieja** | — | Flank collapse (La Palma) | 500 km³ scenario | Disputed; 5–25 m E coast US | Ward & Day 2001 (controversial) |
| **"Poseidon" deployment** | — | 100 Mt underwater | — | ~1–5 m at 100 km (realistic) | DNA 1996, Glasstone 1977 |
### UX
- **5 globe styles**: Natural Earth II (default, local-first), OpenStreetMap,
Esri World Imagery, Cesium World Imagery, Cesium World Bathymetry.
- **Scenario builder** — tabbed Asteroid / Nuclear / Earthquake / Landslide
forms; click-globe-to-pick location.
- **Timeline scrubber + SWE playback** — scrub a 24-frame snapshot sequence
through the live shallow-water solver, with classic or colorblind-safe
overlay colormaps.
- **Effect overlays** — wavefront ring, coastal runup bars at 60+ named
coastal points, DART buoy historical observations for the three modern
presets.
- **Side-by-side comparison mode** — two scenarios on synchronised globes.
- **Catppuccin Mocha** dark theme default + **Latte** light theme toggle.
---
## Install
Prebuilt Windows installers for the latest release are on the
[Releases page](https://github.com/SysAdminDoc/TsunamiSimulator/releases):
an MSI package and an NSIS setup executable. The v0.4.4 Windows installers are
locally built from this repository and are currently unsigned until a Windows
code-signing certificate is configured, so Windows may show an unknown-publisher
warning. macOS and Linux remain supported source-build targets; platform
installers for those systems should be produced locally on those platforms when
signing/build hosts are available.
The app launches on the bundled **Natural Earth II** globe by default and is
fully usable without network tiles or a token. OpenStreetMap and Esri imagery
remain no-token online options, and a free Cesium ion token unlocks
high-resolution satellite imagery and visual bathymetric terrain from Settings.
Solver bathymetry remains the app's coarse offline basin/shelf approximation
until the blocked GEBCO data path is resolved.
### Build from source
Prerequisites:
- **Node.js** ≥ 20 LTS
- **Rust** ≥ 1.78 (stable) with `rustup`
- Windows: Visual Studio 2022/2026 with "Desktop development with C++"
workload (provides MSVC `link.exe`); WebView2 runtime (preinstalled on Win11)
- macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools
- Linux: `libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev`, `libgtk-3-dev`,
`libayatana-appindicator3-dev`, `librsvg2-dev`, `libsoup-3.0-dev`
The Tauri CLI ships via the `@tauri-apps/cli` npm dev dependency — no
separate `cargo install` step.
```bash
git clone https://github.com/SysAdminDoc/TsunamiSimulator
cd TsunamiSimulator
npm install
npm run dev # browser preview with deterministic demo data
npm run tauri dev # full desktop app with Rust/Tauri IPC
npm run verify # local type/lint/test/audit/build verification gate
npm run tauri build # platform installer(s) in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/
```
To bake a Cesium ion token at build time, `cp .env.example .env` and paste
it in; otherwise leave it blank and paste at runtime in **Settings**.
---
## Architecture
```
┌─────────────────────────── Tauri 2 Window ───────────────────────────┐
│ ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ React 19 + TypeScript + Vite (frontend / WebView2) │ │
│ │ ─ CesiumJS 1.142+ globe with optional bathymetric terrain │ │
│ │ ─ Scenario builder, timeline, overlays, results panel │ │
│ └────────────────────────────── ▲ ───────────────────────────────┘ │
│ │ tauri::invoke (JSON over IPC) │
│ ┌────────────────────────────── ▼ ───────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ Rust backend (src-tauri/) │ │
│ │ ─ physics::asteroid Ward–Asphaug + Schmidt–Holsapple │ │
│ │ ─ physics::nuclear Glasstone–Dolan + Le Méhauté │ │
│ │ ─ physics::landslide Fritz–Hager + Slingerland–Voight │ │
│ │ ─ physics::earthquake Okada 1985 (planned) │ │
│ │ ─ physics::shallow_water NSWE + Synolakis runup │ │
│ │ ─ data::bathymetry coarse basin/shelf depth sampler │ │
│ │ ─ presets Chicxulub / Tōhoku / Lituya / … │ │
│ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
Heavy physics runs in the Rust backend (multi-threaded via `rayon`, GPU via `wgpu` planned). The frontend only handles globe rendering, controls, and result visualization. The IPC boundary keeps the WebView from blocking on million-cell SWE solves.
---
## The science (and its limits)
This is not a forecast tool. Compared to operational models like NOAA MOST:
- **What's accurate** — initial conditions (cavity geometry from Ward–Asphaug, fault displacement from Okada), idealized open-ocean propagation in deep water, far-field arrival times.
- **What's approximate** — solver bathymetry (coarse basin means with a shelf taper, not GEBCO/SRTM15+), coastal runup (we use Synolakis 1987 analytical instead of full wetting/drying), first-order inundation discs, dispersion (linear long-wave first, Boussinesq later).
- **What's wrong** — anything involving the atmosphere coupling (Hunga Tonga–style Lamb-wave coupling is a research frontier), tsunami earthquake source-time functions (we use static dislocation), submarine landslide rheology.
- **The "Russia Poseidon" honest take** — Russian state media's 500-m-wave claim is propaganda. The 1996 Defense Nuclear Agency study put underwater-explosion wave-generation efficiency at ~5%. A 100-Mt warhead at 100 km open ocean produces a ~few-meter wave, not a city-killer. We model both the propaganda yield and a realistic one — the comparison is the point.
See [`docs/science/`](./docs/science) for formula derivations and citations.
---
## Citations (anchors, full list in `docs/science/REFERENCES.bib`)
- Ward, S. N., & Asphaug, E. (2000). Asteroid impact tsunami: a probabilistic hazard assessment. *Icarus*, 145, 64–78.
- Range, M. M., et al. (2022). The Chicxulub Impact Produced a Powerful Global Tsunami. *AGU Advances*. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021AV000627
- Synolakis, C. E. (1987). The runup of solitary waves. *J. Fluid Mech.*, 185, 523–545.
- Okada, Y. (1985). Surface deformation due to shear and tensile faults in a half-space. *BSSA*, 75, 1135–1154.
- Fritz, H. M., Hager, W. H., & Minor, H.-E. (2001). Lituya Bay case: rockslide impact and wave run-up. *Sci. Tsunami Hazards*, 19, 3–22.
- Glasstone, S., & Dolan, P. J. (1977). *The Effects of Nuclear Weapons* (3rd ed.). USDOE.
- Le Méhauté, B., & Wang, S. (1996). *Water Waves Generated by Underwater Explosion*. World Scientific.
- Collins, G. S., Melosh, H. J., & Marcus, R. A. (2005). Earth Impact Effects Program. *Meteoritics & Planetary Science*, 40, 817–840.
- Berger, M. J., George, D. L., LeVeque, R. J., & Mandli, K. T. (2011). The GeoClaw software for depth-averaged flows. *Advances in Water Resources*, 34(9), 1195–1206.
---
## Roadmap & research
- [`ROADMAP.md`](./ROADMAP.md) — phased delivery plan (v0.1.0 → v1.0.0).
- [`COMPLETED.md`](./COMPLETED.md) — shipped feature summary.
- [`RESEARCH_REPORT.md`](./RESEARCH_REPORT.md) — current research synthesis.
- [`docs/history/`](./docs/history/) — archived research plans, including the v0.4.0 forward plan.
## License
[MIT](./LICENSE). For scientific education and hazard-awareness visualization only. Not for evacuation planning. Use NOAA NTWC/PTWC for real warnings.
## Author
[@SysAdminDoc](https://github.com/SysAdminDoc) — Senior Systems Administrator, medical-imaging IT, side projects in physics-based simulators.