Satellite view of Tsunami effect

This is a satellite composite of multiple images taken from satellite data after the fact of the recent Tsunami. You can see the intensity of the wave front is greater in some parts, hence the reason for the seemingly random intensity in some countries and not others.

The animated GIF shows how far the Tsunami travelled in 180 minutes.

Of course the real use of this is when a computer can recognise the patterns it is seeing real time and alert accordingly.