The National Science Foundation has awarded nearly $1 million to a team led by University of Hawaii Professor H. Ronald Riggs for the study of how tsunami debris affects infrastructure.

The researchers will study how logs, utility poles, steel shipping containers and other large items carried by tsunamis can affect buildings and structures like fuel and chemical storage tanks.

The university said in a news release that communities would be able to withstand tsunamis better if scientists had a greater understanding of these effects and helped communities upgrade building codes.

UH Professor Marcello Kobayashi is joining the study along with scholars from Oregon State, Leigh, and Nagoya universities.