Waseda Seminar 2014

Paper No


VALIDATION OF THE TSUNAMI FORECAST MODEL FOR TALCAHUANO,
CHILE


Rafael Arnguiz
1


1. Introduction
Tsunami forecast models are important in estimating the maximum tsunami
amplitude in a specific location after a larger earthquake. Unfortunately, a
comprehensive forecast model cannot yet be implemented in Chile, due to the fact that
none of the required infrastructure (such as precomputed earthquake events and DART
or GPS buoys) is available along the Chilean coast at present. On that ground, Aranguiz
et al (2013) proposed a simple forecast model for Talcahuano which uses the earthquake
magnitude as a main input in order to estimate the maximum tsunami amplitude when a
large earthquake at the Arica-Tocopilla source region take place. Moreover, on April 1
st

an earthquake of magnitude 8.2 took place at the same seismic region and a minor
tsunami was generated which arrived to Talcahuano. Therefore, the tsunami forecast
model could be validated and future improvement could be implemented.
The present paper analyzes the prediction of the tsunami forecast model thus the
maximum tsunami amplitude at Talcahuano due to the 2014 tsunami can be contrasted
with the model prediction. The second section gives a short description of the 2014
earthquake and tsunami. The third section analyzes the tsunami forecast model
prediction and the forth section presents the main conclusions.

2. 2014 tsunami earthquake and tsunami
On April 1
st
of 2014 an earthquake of magnitude Mw=8.2 took place off Iquique,
north of Chile (Yagi et al, 2014). The focal depth was defined as 38.9km
(www.sismologia.cl). The tsunami was recorded at several tide gauges along the
Chilean coast, such as Arica, Iquique, Patache and Mejillones. The tsunami was also
recorded as far as Talcahuano (1,500 km from the tsunami source). The recorded
tsunami waveforms at Talcahuano are given in Figure 1. The upper frame shows both
the sea level variation as recorded and the predicted tidal variation, while the lower
frame shows the filtered sea level variation (without tide). The maximum tsunami
amplitude took place for the third tsunami wave and reached up to 0.33m.

3. Tsunami forecast model
The forecast model is given in equation 1 (Aranguiz et al, 2013), in which

is
the tide level at the moment of maximum inundation,

is he focal depth, is the

seasurface elevation bounds which depends on the earthquake magnitude, and , and
are coefficient which also depend on the earthquake magnitude.

+ (1)

1
Department of Civil Engineering, Universidad Catlica de la Ssma Concepcin-Chile, and Associate Researcher at
the National Research Center for Integrated Natural Disaster Management (CIGIDEN)
CONOCYT/FONDAP//15110017 , raranguiz@ucsc.cl

If the

is set up to be zero, it is possible to compare the predicted maximum

tsunami amplitude with the recorded value from Figure 1-b. Figure 2 shows a plot of
equation 1 including the sea surface elevation bounds. The asterisk in the Figure
corresponds to the maximum recorded tsunami amplitude at Talcahuano.
From Figure 2 it is possible to see that the recorded tsunami amplitude is much
lower than the predicted bounds (0.65-0.9 m), which implies that the forecast model
could be inaccurate. However, it is important to take into account that the forecast
model was obtained from a rectangular tsunami source with uniform slip by means of
the Okada (1985) formulation (Aranguiz et al, 2013), while the 2014 tsunami was
generated by a non-homogeneous slip distribution (Yagi et al, 2014; Lay et al 2014).
The difference between the uniform and non-uniform fault model was analyzed by
Aranguiz et al (2013), and they concluded that the former over predicts the maximum
tsunami wave amplitude thus conservative values are obtained. Subsequently, the
surface elevation bounds could be omitted in the forecast model, due to the fact that the
mean values are already conservative. Therefore, future improvement of the model
needs to consider that the average values are the upper bounds.

4. Conclusion
The April 2014 tsunami arrived to the Bay of Concepcin and a tsunami amplitude
of 0.33m was recorded at Talcahuano. The tsunami waveforms are similar to the ones
obtained by Aranguiz et al (2013) by means of planar fault models of the tsunami
source. Even though the tsunami forecast model gave conservative maximum tsunami
amplitude, the predicted value was accurate enough to allow local authorities knowing
in advance possible effects on Talcahuano, thus proper emergency measurements were
implemented in Talcahuano during the night of April 1
st
.


References
Arnguiz, R., Shibayama, T., Yamazaki, Y. (2013), Tsunamis from the Arica-Tocopilla
Source Region and their Effects on Ports of Central Chile. Natural Hazards 12/2013;
DOI:10.1007/s11069-013-0906-5.

Lay, T., H. Yue, E. E. Brodsky, and C. An (2014), The 1 April 2014 Iquique, Chile, Mw
8.1 earthquake rupture sequence, Geophys. Res. Lett., 41, 38183825,
doi:10.1002/2014GL060238.

Yagi, Y., R. Okuwaki, B. Enescu, S. Hirano,Y. Yamagami, S. Endo, and T. Komoro
(2014), Rupture process of the 2014 Iquique Chile Earthquake in relation with the
foreshock activity, Geophys. Res. Lett., 41, doi:10.1002/2014GL060274.
Figure 1. Recorded tsunami waveform at Talcahuano. a) recorded and predicted sea
level variation, b) Filtered tsu
Figure 2. Tsunami forecast model for Talcahuano as a function of the earthquake
magnitude. The asterisk indicate

Figure 3. Tsunami waveforms at Talcahuano considering three different tsunami
sources.
. Recorded tsunami waveform at Talcahuano. a) recorded and predicted sea
level variation, b) Filtered tsunami wave form.
Tsunami forecast model for Talcahuano as a function of the earthquake
magnitude. The asterisk indicates the maximum tsunami amplitude at Talcahuano.
. Tsunami waveforms at Talcahuano considering three different tsunami

. Recorded tsunami waveform at Talcahuano. a) recorded and predicted sea

Tsunami forecast model for Talcahuano as a function of the earthquake
the maximum tsunami amplitude at Talcahuano.

. Tsunami waveforms at Talcahuano considering three different tsunami