IASPEI - Picture Gallery

IUGG XXIV General Assembly July 2-13, 2007 Perugia, Italy
(S) - IASPEI - International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's
Interior
JSS002 Poster presentation 1820
Finite Fault Modelling for Tsunamigenic Earthquakes in Australasia using
Seismic and Sea Level Data
Dr. Phil Cummins
Geospatial and Earth Monitoring Division Geoscience Australia IASPEI
Toshitaka Baba, Hong Kie Thio, Ming-Hai Jia
Since the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and Indian Ocean Tsunami, there has been a vast
increase in the monitoring of large earthquakes and tsunami-related sea level changes, especially in the
Australasian region. The increase in data has resulted in much better coverage of tsunami sources in
this region, much of it in real-time. In this presentation we consider how well this increased monitoring
allows us to characterise these sources, by performing finite fault inversions using combinations of
seismic, sea level and GPS data. While tide gauge data is often limited by its sensitivity to poorly known
local bathymetry, there are an increasing number of ocean bottom pressure measurements which
record tsunami waveforms unaffected by shallow bathymetry, and we investigate the potential of these
for constraining earthquake source properties. Two fundamental questions investigated are: (1) Can
earthquake source models be inferred with sufficient accuracy to be used to validate teletsunami
modeling (2) Can accurate source models be developed in near-real-time We discuss our results for
modelling recent tsunamigenic earthquakes with a view towards answering these questions.
Keywords: earthquake, tsunami, modeling