Tsunami-induced wave pressure and forces: a review of clear water to black tsunamis

This review synthesizes the evolution of tsunami load assessment from established clear-water formulations to the emerging problem of black tsunamis (sediment-laden tsunamis), focusing on wave pressure and force prediction for coastal structures. For clear-water conditions, a comparatively mature framework has been established, and the existing literature can be broadly organized into depth-coefficient-based and drag-coefficient-based approaches, together with facility-specific formulations for breakwaters, general buildings, and tsunami evacuation buildings. In contrast, black-tsunami load research remains at an early, pre-standardization stage. Available guidelines and recent experimental/numerical studies indicate that suspended fine sediments can influence tsunami-induced loading, but current evidence remains insufficient for transferable engineering prediction. This limitation results from restricted experimental envelopes, limited validation datasets, and configuration-dependent numerical results. Establishing a unified definition and an engineering-oriented predictive framework is therefore a central priority for future research.