Effect of bathymetry data on tsunami wave ray tracing in the western Banten sea

The lack of tsunami wave warning during the Anak Krakatau collapse in 2018 resulted in devastating damage to coastal areas. The tsunami wave arrived in the coastal areas approximately half an hour after the collapse. As a tsunami wave can travel abruptly, an early warning system should warn faster. However, a warning system based on a sophisticated hydrodynamic model in real-time would take time to conduct the numerical tsunami wave simulation. Hence, this study proposes a fast and reliable estimation of tsunami wave propagation through a classic ray tracing analysis. We use two ray-tracing methods to investigate the tsunami wave propagation from Anak Krakatau to the western Banten Sea. The first method follows Snell’s law, considering dispersive waves, and the second assumes non-dispersive waves based on the ray tracing equations, considering the Earth’s sphericity. Both methods are quantitatively evaluated by comparing the travel time measured at Anyer and Marina Jambu. This study finds that non-dispersive wave tracing performs a shorter computational time and slightly better prediction of tsunami wave propagation than dispersive-based wave tracing, with a relative absolute difference of the travel time of 17.9–26.7% in Anyer and 3.6–5.2% in Marina Jambu. This study also confirms the importance of bathymetry validity in wave ray tracing. Two regional bathymetry datasets with a mean difference of less than 5 m result in different wave ray tracing, in which one dataset does not produce the wave ray path towards the Panaitan Island. Based on bathymetric surveys in Anyer and Marina Jambu, the national bathymetry data (BATNAS) has shown its superiority to being used as a bathymetry in the ray-tracing process, with correlations of 81% and 93% in both areas compared to other available bathymetry datasets. We summarize that reliable bathymetry data and the non-dispersive ray tracing method can be used as an initial estimation of tsunami wave propagation efficiently.