Modelling tsunami initial conditions due to rapid coseismic seafloor displacement: efficient numerical integration and a tool to build unit source databases

In: Natural hazards and earth system sciences: NHESS, Band 24, Heft 8, S. 2773-2791

Abstract

Abstract. The initial conditions for the simulation of a seismically induced tsunami for a rapid, assumed-to-be-instantaneous vertical seafloor displacement is given by the Kajiura low-pass filter integral. This work proposes a new, efficient, and accurate approach for its numerical evaluation, valid when the seafloor displacement is discretized as a set of rectangular contributions over variable bathymetry. We compare several truncated quadrature formulae, selecting the optimal one. The reconstruction of the initial sea level perturbation as a linear combination of pre-computed elementary sea surface displacements is tested on the tsunamigenic Kuril earthquake doublet – a megathrust and an outer rise – that occurred in the central Kuril Islands in late 2006 and early 2007. We also confirm the importance of the horizontal contribution to tsunami generation, and we consider a simple model of the inelastic deformation of the wedge on realistic bathymetry. The proposed approach results are accurate and fast enough to be considered relevant for practical applications. A tool to build a tsunami source database for a specific region of interest is provided.