Dr Constance Chua is a postdoctoral research fellow at the International Research Institute of Disaster Science, Tohoku University, Japan. She completed her BA and BSc (Hons) at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and received her PhD in Earth Sciences from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, in 2021. Prior to joining Tohoku University, she was a research fellow at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, NTU. Her research focuses on disaster risk management, with expertise in coastal hazards. The central theme of her work is assessing the vulnerability of critical infrastructure—especially seaports—to extreme coastal hazards such as tsunamis and storm surges, with a regional emphasis on Asia, where risks from extreme sea-level events remain poorly constrained. Her research has included quantifying the structural fragility of port infrastructure, evaluating the vulnerability of the global maritime network to tsunamis, and developing nearshore bathymetry using remote sensing techniques. Beyond her research, Dr Chua has been an active member of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) since 2017. She has served as a session convenor since 2021 and is a member of the AOGS Risk Assessment Committee Coastal Zone Risk Mitigation and Management Working Group (CZWG).
Tsunamis pose profound risks to critical infrastructure, disrupting not only physical assets but also the broader systems that societies depend upon. Quantifying tsunami impacts on critical infrastructure is essential for risk mitigation and resilience-based design; however, it remains a complex and multi-disciplinary challenge. This lecture synthesizes recent advances in quantifying tsunami impacts on infrastructure, with a focus on seaports as vital nodes of economic activity and interdependent networks. Detailed assessments of the 2011 Tohoku tsunami reveal how inundation and structural characteristics influence damage to port infrastructures and associated industries, providing a foundation for probabilistic impact estimation. Complementing this, network-centric approaches extend impact quantification beyond individual ports to encompass the global port system, showing how a tsunami can propagate disruption through trade routes and amplify economic consequences beyond local context, especially under future sea level rise scenarios. Together, these integrated approaches illustrate both the progress in the systematic assessment of tsunami risk to critical infrastructure and as well as the challenges that remain, including limited historical data and uncertainties in hazard and vulnerability models. The lecture aims to provide insights into recent methodological advances and to identify opportunities for improving future assessments of critical infrastructure resilience.