ABSTRACT
In a tsunami event, the most important aspects happen at the coastline, mainly because it is here that loss of life and damage occurs due to land inundation. The so-called normal modes are free oscillations of the coastal gulfs, bays, estuaries, inlets, lagoons and backwaters, and all these play an important role in determining the coastal behavior of the tsunami. Here we will briefly review some of the classical concepts of the normal mode dynamics, following Murty (1977), and Kowalik and Murty (1993). The role of the normal modes in tsunami coastal effects is evident from Kowalik (2005a,b), Murty et al. (2005a-c), Murty et al. (2006a-c), Nirupama et al. (2005) and Nirupama et al. (2006).
