Soliton interactions of the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation and generation of large-amplitude water waves

We study the maximum wave amplitude produced by line-soliton interactions of the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili II (KPII) equation, and we discuss a mechanism of generation of large amplitude shallow water waves by multi-soliton interactions of KPII. We also describe a method to predict the possible maximum wave amplitude from asymptotic data. Finally, we report on numerical simulations of multi-soliton complexes of the KPII equation which verify the robustness of all types of soliton interactions and web-like structure.