DATE:

Friday, October 22, 2021

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

GMCS 314

SPEAKER:

Ignacio Sepulveda, Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, San Diego State University

ABSTRACT:

In the last 15 years, Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Assessments/Analyses (PTHA) have gained recognition as a powerful approach to quantify the risk of life and property loss in coastal areas due to tsunamis. While the PTHA method is straightforward, various sources of uncertainty need to be investigated before we attempt a standardization for Coastal Engineering studies. The uncertainty sources include our imperfect knowledge of the mechanism and occurrence of tsunamigenic sources, the seafloor geometry and the interaction of tsunamis with other physical processes, such as tides and the climate-change-driven sea level rise.

In this talk, I present my new studies which aim to combine Civil Engineering, Stochastic modeling and Geophysics. First, we explore the impact of bathymetry uncertainties in tsunami propagation models. Due to the partial coverage of shipboard bathymetric soundings, errors in water depth estimates may lead to significant errors in tsunami simulations. The tsunami errors are investigated and interesting results are found. Second, we present a new study addressing the impact of tides and climate-change-driven sea level rise in PTHA studies. For this, we developed a new mathematical model based on a non-stationary Poisson process to determine hazard probabilities within an exposure time (e.g. 100 years). Relevant questions about the impact of tides and sea level rise on tsunamis can now be answered.

HOST:

Jose Castillo

VIDEO: