The northern tip of the Bay of Bengal, which is home to more than 60 million people, is at risk from tsunami-generating earthquakes, an Australian seismologist says.

Writing today in the journal Nature, Dr Phil Cummins of Geoscience Australia uses historical data and recent seismic surveys to outline the earthquake risk.

Cummins has also called for further investigations, including a network of GPS observations and geological studies to confirm his hypothesis.

Cummins says it is widely accepted that there is a high risk of another giant earthquake just off the coast of central Sumatra.

This is to the east of the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake that devastated coastal communities across South and Southeast Asia, killing more than 200,000 people.

But he says there is currently little concern about the subduction zone to the north in the Bay of Bengal, along the coast of Burma.