Near-real time tsunami inundation forecast for Central America : case study of the 1992 Nicaragua tsunami earthquake

摘要

A near-field tsunami inundation forecast method (NearTIF) for the Pacific coast of Central America is developed and tested on the basis of the 1992 Nicaragua tsunami earthquake case. The appropriate source model of the 1992 Nicaragua earthquake, estimated using the W-phase inversion with a depth dependent rigidity curve from a previous study, is used as a reference model to test the proposed NearTIF method. The tsunami inundation along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua is computed from the reference model of the 1992 Nicaragua earthquake. The tsunami inundation obtained using the NearTIF method matches the tsunami inundations computed from the reference model. The tsunami heights and the tsunami inundation of the 1992 Nicaragua tsunami surveyed by a previous study are roughly matched by the tsunami inundations obtained using the NearTIF method in this study. Although the computational time for the tsunami inundation from the reference source model is about 95 min, the computational time plus the database search time for the NearTIF method is approximately 2-4 min. The method presented in this study can be used as a near-real time tsunami inundation forecast method for the Pacific coast of Central America.