for BritishColumbia A TsunamiDetection Initiative March 27th-28th 2014 Port Alberni/Sidney oceannetworks.ca AN INITIATIVE OF
2 Copyright 2014 Ocean Networks Canada
Ocean Networks Canada
Technology Enterprise Facility (TEF)
University of Victoria
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3 Table of Contents
Introduction 6 We are Tseshaht [Ts’ishaa7ath] 7 A message from Port Alberni Mayor John Douglas 9 A letter from Ocean Networks Canada President Kate Moran 10 About Ocean Networks Canada 11 Smart Ocean Systems™ 12 Detecting Tsunamis on the NEPTUNE network and the ONC Tsunami project 13
Abstracts 15 Hydroacoustic waves modeling of Tsunami Early Warning Systems (TEWS) 15 Uncertainty reduction in near field tsunami early warning 17 Modelling of tsunami waves at the Institute of Ocean Sciences 18 New NOAA Tsunami Forecasting System 18 Tsunami wave impact on walls and beaches 19 GPU-accelerated hydrodynamics for wave impact problems 20 Modeling hazards from seismic and SMF sources 21 Assessing the tsunami hazard of the British Columbia coastline 22 Tsunami Modeling and Inundation Mapping in Alaska: Development of maximum credible tsunami scenarios 22 In the wake of the 2011 Tohoku Tsunami: Modeling of tsunami wave propagation and evacuation. 23 Utilizing power of present and future open-ocean tsunami monitoring networks 24 Indian Tsunami Early Warning System 25 Cascadia Megathrust Rupture Models for Tsunami Modelling 26 The Activities of the US Tsunami Warning Centers During the Haida Gwaii Tsunami 27
Summary of Discussions 29 Instrumentation 29 Earthquake Source Definition 32 Tsunami modeling 36
Attendees Biographies 41
4 “The foggy dawn of Saturday, March 28, 1964, broke on a stunned and unbelieving populace in the Alberni Valley. Residents were stunned by the small glimpse they’d already had of the fantastic damage done to their communities… unbelieving at the reports that no one had been drowned or even seriously injured in the tidal wave which swept the low-lying areas in the midnight hours following the great Alaska earthquake.”
Civil Defence Circular.
Special report on Alberni tidal wave disaster.
Provincial emergency program report.
5 Introduction
Fifty years ago the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in North America hit south central Alaska, causing a tsunami that swept along the BC coast, heavily damaging coastal communities such as Port Alberni. Fifty years later, much has been learned about how the Earth’s crust works, but ocean scientists are still working to understand the dynamics of the great waves.
On March 27th and 28th, 2014 Ocean Networks Canada hosted an international workshop on tsunami modeling and instrumentation. Forty-four attendees from
Canada, Japan, India, USA, Germany, France and Italy congregated in Port Alberni,
British Columbia, on the 50-year anniversary of the tsunami that devastated this city.
The shore station that hosts the entry of the cable from the NEPTUNE observatory was the venue for this event. The Tseshaht First Nation and the Mayor of Port Alberni opened the day with a welcoming followed by a full day of presentations from scientists from the major agencies responsible for tsunami mitigation. The most recent tsunami research was presented with an emphasis on the coast of British Columbia and the geohazards present along the Cascadia margin. The second day of the workshop, hosted at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, focused on near-field tsunamis and the instrumentation currently available for their detection. The experts discussed the design and technology that should be implemented for the detection and forecast of near-field tsunamis on the British Columbia coast. Three groups were formed that centered their discussions on (1) instrumentation, (2) earthquake source definition and
(3) modeling.
This report summarizes the information shared during the workshop. Videos and presentations are available on our website: http://www.oceannetworks.ca/science/ getting-involved/workshops/tsunami-workshop-2014.
6 We are Tseshaht [Ts’ishaa7ath]
The Tseshaht First Nation is a vibrant community on the West Coast of Vancouver Island
in Port Alberni, British Columbia, with an active and progressive natural resources-
based economy. We are proud of our culture and work as a community to preserve our
traditional values and the teachings.
Tseshaht translates as “the people of Ts’ishaa,” a place
on what is known today as Benson Island, one of the
Broken Group Islands in Barkley Sound. We are one
of the 14 Nations that make up the Nuu-chah-nulth
[Nootka] people of western Vancouver Island.
At the core of Tseshaht is our chronicle of creation; our
spiritual origin. We were created at Ts’ishaa, and our
first ancestors (Tseshaht man and women) were given by Nas (creator) the highest
spiritual responsibility and stewardship of the Broken Group Islands.
Our ownership of land is based on the Nuu-chah-nulth laws of hahuulhi, which means
the territory of a nation under the stewardship of a King (Head of state). Being king
indicated the closest spiritual bloodline to our chronicle of creation.
Our late King Adam Shewish, great-grandfather Chief Haayuupinuulh [born c.1830]
was the King of the Tseshaht when mum-ulth-ne settlement started in the Alberni
Valley. His name, meaning “getter of ten (whales)” signified his status as a prominent
chief, including his King’s right to hunt whales.
7 Tseshaht hahuulhi changed through marriage and alliances, a series of wars, and the incorporation of affiliated groups. A prime example was a historic conflict withthe
Tsumas7ath, already living on the Somass River, the Hikwuulh7ath and the Hach’aa7ath established themselves at on the Somass River.
These hahuulhi enhancements continued as the Tseshaht absorbed the Hikwuulh7ath and the Hach’aa7ath. As well as once exclusive properties of the Nash7as7ath,
Maktl7ii7ath, Ts’umaa7as7ath and the original Ts’ishaa7ath.
This meant that the hahuulhi of the these groups in the Broken Group Islands, central
Barkley Sound, a large extent of the Alberni Inlet and the Alberni Valley became
Tseshaht territories.
Tseshaht Tutuupata, the plural of tupaati, refers to the hereditary privileges or preroga- tives that governed the ownership and use of practically everything of value in Tseshaht society. These included resources like rivers, fish trap sites, and plant gathering sites, as well as intellectual property resources like names, ceremonial songs, dances, and regalia.
Tutuupata determined rank in Tseshaht society, and were inherited within a family.
Tseshaht Seasonal Round
The traditional Tseshaht economy was determined by tupaati - the ownership of resources.
Tseshaht tupaati included both “outside” and “inside” resources throughout this territory.
This meant that in late winter and early spring the Tseshaht travelled to their “outside” tupaati to utilize the resources of these traditional sites such as sea mammals, halibut, rockfish and salmon and procurement areas in Barkley Sound. As the seasons changed, the resources changed, and the Tseshaht moved back to their “inside” tupaati, following the salmon up Alberni Inlet to the Somass River.
The Tseshaht now exert our jurisdiction over our hahuulhi based on our history.
8 A message from Port Alberni Mayor John Douglas
It gives me great pleasure to extend a warm
welcome to all the delegates and scientists
attending the international tsunami modeling
workshop hosted by Ocean Networks Canada
here in Port Alberni.
The waves that hit our community 50 years
ago left an indelible mark on the memories
of those who experienced it and forever
changed our understanding of the local
dangers posed by tsunamis.
The City of Port Alberni and the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District are working closely
together to plan and prepare for such emergencies. Your knowledge and expertise
represents an important link to these efforts and our goal to be a world leader in the
field of emergency preparedness.
As an organization focused on our ocean planet and its complex systems, I congratu-
late Ocean Networks Canada for the important contributions they are making to the
advancement of science and technology. The City of Port Alberni is honoured to be part
of this important gathering.
Yours truly,
City of Port Alberni,
John Douglas - Mayor
9 A letter from Ocean Networks Canada President Kate Moran
On behalf of Ocean Networks Canada, an
initiative of the University of Victoria, I’m
delighted to welcome you, the world’s leading
tsunami researchers, to the shore station
of the 840-km long NEPTUNE cabled ocean
observatory.
Our sincere thanks go to Mayor Douglas and
the citizens of Port Alberni for their warm
welcome and for including us in community
events that mark this very historic time – the
fiftieth anniversary of a devastating earthquake and tsunami. I also am grateful to the Tseshaht First Nation for sharing their ancestral traditions with us.
This workshop location—at the terminus of the NEPTUNE cabled observatory in the
Northeast Pacific—is where, fifty years ago, a powerful tsunami came surging up the
Alberni Inlet and inundated the shoreline.
Because of this anniversary, it is particularly fitting to bring all of you together to Port
Alberni at this time.
I wish you all the best for a successful workshop and look forward to an exciting future filled with rich collaborations.
Sincerely,
Kate Moran, PhD
President and CEO
10 About Ocean Networks Canada
Ocean Networks Canada operates world-class ocean observatories off the west coast
of British Columbia for the advancement of science and the benefit of Canada. The
NEPTUNE and VENUS cabled observatories collect data on physical, chemical, biological,
and geological aspects of the ocean over long time periods, supporting research on
complex ocean and Earth processes in ways not previously possible.
Figure 1: Ocean Networks Canada’s observatories in British Columbia.
The NEPTUNE regional observatory and VENUS coastal observatory, which have been
operating for four and seven years respectively, provide unique scientific and technical
capabilities that permit researchers to operate instruments remotely and receive data
at their home laboratories anywhere on the globe in real time. These facilities extend
and complement other research platforms and programs, whether currently operating
or planned for future deployment. The Ocean Networks Canada Innovation Centre
promotes the advanced technologies developed by NEPTUNE and VENUS.
Ocean Networks Canada contributes significantly to the international ocean research
and observing enterprise by providing infrastructure below the seafloor, on the
seafloor, in the water, and at the sea’s surface in a wide range of ocean environments.
Our network is especially well suited to support research that requires continuous data
collection from a diverse array of ocean parameters over long time periods because
of their pivotal role in enabling a more complete understanding of ocean and Earth
11 processes. Real-time flow of data to on-shore laboratories and data centres permits rapid analysis of information on natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, storm surge, and underwater landslides.
Because the cabled infrastructure is fixed on the seafloor, observatory data collection is being complemented with ever more sophisticated platforms such as gliders, unmanned undersea and aerial vehicles, and remotely-located observatories.
NEPTUNE and VENUS share the same data management and archive system called
Oceans 2.0. It provides users with open access to real-time and archived data and supports a collaborative work environment. The University of Saskatchewan hosts the observatories’ data backup system, which collects over 80 terabytes per year.
Smart Ocean Systems™
The Innovation Centre created an integrated portfolio of ocean observing products and services branded as “Smart Ocean Systems™”. The Centre’s portfolio of Smart Ocean
System™ products and services (Figure 1) fall naturally into three general categories:
• Sensors and Instruments
• Ocean Observation Systems
• Ocean Analytics
Figure 2: Smart Ocean Systems™ portfolio of products and services
These products and services address growing global demand for informed and rapid decision making in response to marine monitoring or geo-hazard events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, oil spills, and vessel navigation.
Smart Ocean Systems™ are advanced ocean sensor and instrument technologies that
12 capture data on events such as changes in temperature, currents, dissolved gasses,
seismic, sound and video recordings triggered by natural or anthropogenic change.
Ocean Observation System technologies comprising:
• Ocean Observing Technology: hardware infrastructure including undersea
high-voltage and fibre-optic cable, connection nodes, highbandwidth com-
munications, robust servers and storage; and
• ONC’s digital infrastructure, Oceans 2.0, which is a data management system
for sensor interfacing, data capture, storage and archiving, manipulation and
annotation, and internet presentation; and
• Ocean Analytics, which are the discovery and communication of meaningful
patterns in ocean data resulting in information-based decision support
products and services that allow informed responses by researchers, industry
and a broad range of other users.
Detecting Tsunamis on the NEPTUNE network and the ONC Tsunami project
The NEPTUNE cabled observatory array off the west coast of Vancouver Island detected
the passage of the tsunami wave generated by the far field Tohoku earthquake and
tsunami event of 2011. The Bottom Pressure Recorders at three different nodes along
the length of the NEPTUNE cabled network measured the wave height at different times
as it approached the shores of Vancouver Island and as shown in the graphic below.
The NEPTUNE array can be used to detect near field events with existing instrumentation
including seismometers and hydrophones with the potential of incorporating High
Frequency coastal RADAR to directly measure and profile incoming tsunami waves
several minutes before they impact the shoreline.
The ONC Tsunami project is a shared initiative between ONC and the University of
Victoria (UVic). This program is designed to conduct high speed analysis of NEPTUNE
sensor data from a near field tsunami event and combine these data with tsunami
model algorithms in order to simulate the inundation impact onshore. A near-field
seismic event detected at the Cascadia subduction zone may yield only 15 minutes of
13 warning between the start of an event and the wave impact on the western shoreline of Vancouver Island.
The University of Victoria Computer Science department program has been working to calculate complex tsunami models and provide predicted inundation maps within only a few minutes by optimizing the processing time of models using High Performance
Computing infrastructure with potentially hundreds of parallel CPU’s. By combining with ONC’s infratsructure, existing international operational systems and research, the
ONC Tsunami system could prototype near-real-time forecasts that consider unique
BC geography and conditions. The simulation models will use one or more cities on the west coast of B.C.’s Vancouver Island as case studies and will be designed in such a way that it can be reconfigured for other locales that are exposed to tsunami risk. The system will be designed to be open and flexible enough to support different applications that require high speed simulation modelling and data fusion from multiple sources.
Figure 3. Tsunami detection in the Ocean Networks Canada marine observatories. Credit NOAA
14 Abstracts
Hydroacoustic waves modeling of Tsunami Early Warning Systems (TEWS)
1 1 1 2 Ali Abdolali , Claudia Cecioni , Giorgio Bellotti , Paolo Sammarco
1 2 University of Roma TRE, University of Roma Tor Vergatat
The Tsunami Early Warning Systems (TEWS) are the most effective tool to reduce or avoid human victims of tsunamis.
State of the art tsunami warning procedures currently relies on seismic and sea level measurements. TEWS must show
some mandatory features in order to be effective, as: fast prediction, reliable response and efficient alarm. Tsunamis have
the energy to propagate across the ocean, therefore the longer are the distances covered, the longer is the time to spread
the alarm and more effective actions can be taken by local emergency authorities in order to save lives and properties.
However, in the areas where the source area is close to the populated coasts, the traveling time of devastating tsunamis
are short. Therefore, it is unfeasible to wait the measurement of the tsunami itself before spreading the alert.
Detection of precursor components of tsunami waves, i.e. pressure waves generated due to the water column compression
triggered by sudden seabed movement, could therefore significantly enhance the efficiency and promptness of TEWS.
This low frequency waves propagate with the speed of sound in water, which is significantly larger than the long wave
tsunami celerity. The records of the faster hydro-acoustic waves can cope with the shortening decision time of spreading
the alarm and enhance the accuracy and trustworthiness of TEWS. Here we present a numerical model based on a depth-
integrated equation for the complete reproduction of these waves.
HYDRO-ACOUSTIC WAVE MODEL.
The idea of using hydroacoustic wave detection for tsunami warning dates back to the work of Ewing et al. (1950). Several
analytical investigations have been carried out to study the physical characteristics of acoustic waves generated by sudden
displacement of sea bottom. It has been proved that there exists a relationship between the tsunamigenic source and
the hydroacoustic waves. Accurate computations of hydroacoustic waves can be carried out using potential flow three
dimensional models. However such category of models is computationally expensive and cannot be easily applied to large
domain. We have therefore developed a numerical model based on the solution of a hyperbolic mild slope equation, valid
in weakly compressible fluids (MSEWC), detailed in Sammarco et al. (2013):
Equation (1) is expressed in terms of fluid velocity potential at the free-surface ψ_n (x,y,t).
15 The model gave us the opportunity of investigating the propagation of such waves in the far field.
Recent experimental evidence of the existence of low-frequency elastic waves generated by the seabed motion has been found during the Tokachi-Oki 2003 tsunami event. The observatory of the Independent Administrative Institution, Japan
Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), detected the pressure signal induced by the earthquake
(Nosov & Kolesov, 2007). In addition, during occurrence of 2012 Haida Gwaii earthquake, Ocean Network Canada measurement in the southern side of earthquake zone showed fast elastic oscillation collected by bottom pressure gauges. These two events are the only available records of hydroacoustic waves with appropriate sampling frequency.
LARGE SCALE APPLICATION TO 2012 HAIDA GWAII TSUNAMI
The current study is the first large -geo
graphical scale application of the numerical
model based on eq. (1). The model is
applied to simulate the hydroacoustic
wave propagation, generated by 2012
Haida Gwaii earthquakes (Fig.1). The
model has been validated against the
full three-dimensional weakly compress-
ible model. The results comparison
with measurements collected by Ocean
Network Canada will be presented in the
conference. The general characterization
of these pressure waves depending on
the generation mechanism, the source
location, the bottom topography and the
Figure 1 – Snapshots of the free-surface hydro-acoustic perturbation given by the depth of the pressure recording point 2012 Haida Gwaii earthquake. can be identified from collected and simulated hydroacoustic signals. According to the numerically reproduced scenario results, we shall propose preliminary indications for the implementation of innovative TEWS based on hydroacoustic wave measurements tsunami warning this methodology can even be extended to an inversion procedure, in which the tsunami sources can be reconstructed from sea level observations. This leads to accurate assessment of the approaching tsunami hazard.
References Nosov, Kolesov, (2007). Elastic oscillations of water column in the 2003 Tokachi-Oki tsunami source: in-situ measurements and 3-D numerical modelling. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 7 (2), 243–249.
Sammarco, Cecioni, Bellotti and Abdolali (2013). Depth-integrated equation for large scale modelling of low-frequency hydroacoustic waves. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 722(R6), doi:10.1017/jfm.2013.153.
16 Uncertainty reduction in near field tsunami early warning How to combine HF radar-based and conventional sea level monitoring, seismic and GNSS observations with advanced modeling
1 2 2 1 Jörn Behrens , Thomas Helzel , Anna Dzvonkovskaya , Klaus-Werner Gurgel
1 2 University of Hamburg, Germany, Helzel Messtechnik, Kaltenkirchen, Germany
Traditional tsunami early warning systems (TEWS) rely mainly on seismic observations for early detection of potentially
tsunamogenic earthquakes. Additionally, sea level observations from deep-sea stations (buoys) and coastal tide gauges
are used to confirm or cancel the assessment based on earthquake characteristics. In far-field tsunami warningthis
methodology can even be extended to an inversion procedure, in which the tsunami sources can be reconstructed from
sea level observations. This leads to accurate assessment of the approaching tsunami hazard.
In near-field tsunami warning operations this approach is not feasible, since the time needed to gather and invert from
sea level observations is too long. Therefore, hazard assessment in this situation is much more dominated by uncertainty.
Usually conservative assumptions are made on the connection between earthquake magnitude and potential hazard,
leading to large numbers of false warnings.
Recently, additional observation methods have greatly improved the ability to accurately assess potential tsunami hazard.
Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) allow for accurate determination of crust deformation. The actual rupture
mechanism can be estimated from these measurements in near real-time. HF radar based observations of the tsunami
wave make it possible to continuously monitor a larger coastal area for incoming wave hazard prior to reaching coastal
sea level gauges, and more importantly settlements and installations.
These additional observational data can help to reduce the uncertainty in near-field tsunami warning operations. However,
the quest is to find a suitable way of combining such observational data with a modeling framework. Modeling assisted
tsunami warning is required, since the number and spatial/time distribution of measurements does not allow for covering
the whole forecast region.
In this presentation, we will introduce the characteristics of different observational methods for tsunami detection and
monitoring, emphasizing the application of HF radar. We will describe the uncertainty involved in near-field tsunami early
warning and derive a rigorous mathematical formulation for capturing this uncertainty. From this we derive a method
to assimilate the available data into a modeling framework for tsunami early warning. Examples from an operational
tsunami early warning system in Indonesia will demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of the approach.
17 Modelling of tsunami waves at the Institute of Ocean Sciences
Josef Cherniawsky and Isaac Fine, Fisheries & Oceans Canada, Sidney, BC
We plan to present an outline of recent tsunami modelling activity at the Institute of Ocean Sciences, showing several examples of tsunami model results for the British Columbia coast. These include tsunami models for historical and more recent subduction type earthquakes and for submarine landslides. Such models can be used to generate community-based tsunami inundation maps for plausible worst-case scenarios, for tsunami risk assessment and for tsunami warnings, thus replacing the current coarse system of tsunami notification zones. The largest inundations risk on the southern BC coast is from a future Cascadia subduction zone (CSZ) earthquake and tsunami. Therefore most of the scenarios considered are for this potentially very destructive event.
New NOAA Tsunami Forecasting System
Marie Eble and Vasily Titov, NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, USA
The sequence of devastating tsunamis across the globe over the past 10 years has significantly heightened awareness and preparation activities associated with these high-impact events. Since the catastrophic 2004 Sumatra tsunami, NOAA has invested significant efforts in modernizing the U.S. tsunami warning system. Recent developments in tsunami modeling capability, inundation forecasting, sensing networks, dissemination capability and local preparation and mitigation activities have gone a long way toward enhancing tsunami resilience within the United States. It is a matter of when, not if, the mainland US will be impacted by a major tsunami possibly to the level of the devastating 11 March 2011 Tohoku event.
Forecast capability is an essential part of the tsunami resilient coastal communities development for the US coastlines.
Short-Term Inundation Forecasting for Tsunamis (SIFT) system developed by the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory was accepted in NOAA operations in 2013. SIFT is the first forecast system that predicts potential tsunami flooding in real time, while tsunamis are propagating across the ocean. Direct tsunami observations from NOAA’s network of deep-ocean tsunami detectors, DARTs, provide real-time data for SIFT to ensure accuracy of the forecast. Forecast products include estimates of tsunami amplitudes, flow velocities, and arrival times and coastal inundation areas. Forecast inundation models have been developed to provide high-resolution real-time tsunami predictions for selected coastal locations while the tsunami is propagating through the open ocean, before the waves have reached many coastlines. Forecast inundation models are incorporated into the SIFT system for use at NOAA’s Pacific and National Tsunami Warning Centers
18 Tsunami wave impact on walls and beaches
Jannette B. Frandsen, Institut National de la Recherce Scientifique, Quebec, Canada
This talk presents a mix of small and large scale experiments as well as numerical model predictions.
Developments of tsunami warning systems have progressed rapidly since the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. In the
receiving end, at the location of harbors, beaches and coastal cities, the process on solving and improving the coastal
protection structures is an involved and overwhelming task.
Run-up/run-down processes consist of violent free-surface flows with a mix of sediment and/or debris. The impact itself
on structures may contain high peak pressures occurring over relatively short time. The long waves of tsunamis are
dominated by the horizontal velocity flow component when approaching the shore. Therefore, it is justifiable to some
degree to apply conventional depth integrated models. However, the role of wave breaking and viscous effects during
run-up/run-down are unclear and cannot be answered accurately with those inviscid model approaches. Development
of numerical models to accurately capture nonlinearities at the free surface and the wave-sediment interaction may
be important features to capture in advancing research in tsunami prediction. This talk introduces and focuses on an
alternative method to traditional numerical modeling, rooted in the Lattice Boltzmann Equations (LBE), to examine the
underlying physics of breaking wave and boundary layer physics. The model approach is intended to be used locally with
coupling to regional models. Simplified LBE models can, however, be used for large domain modeling but the advantages
of the approach diminishes with coarsening resolution. Herein, is introduced a simplified LB model which discretizes the
nonlinear shallow water equations in rotational flows. The free surface model is fully non-linear. Mathematically, this is
taking into account through the collision integral. The collision between particles assumes single time relaxation. Some
validation studies of nonlinear LBE wave loads in tanks will be shown. At shallow depth, bore physics are generated
resembling physics at the tongue of tsunami run-up.
Finally, the new large scale wave canal in Quebec will be introduced. The flume has a depth and a width of 5 m and is
120 m long. The flume is designed for modeling the interactions of waves, tides, currents and sediment transport. The
wavemaker is a piston type with a maximum stroke length of 4 m. Various initial conditions can be set-up including
classical regular/irregular waves and a host of user-defined functions, e.g. landslide and earthquake generated tsunami.
Large amplitude waves can be generated reaching the top of the flume walls with water depths ranging from 2.5 - 3.5 m
with wave periods of 3 - 10 s. Recent example studies will be shown.
19 GPU-accelerated hydrodynamics for wave impact problems
Christian F. Janssen, Institute for Fluid Dynamics and Ship Theory, Hamburg University of Technology
In this talk, we briefly introduce the Lattice-Boltzmann method (LBM), a very efficient numerical method to solvefor strongly nonlinear and turbulent free surface flows. The LBM has recently matured as a viable alternative to classical CFD approaches, i.e. Finite-Volume or particle-based methods. The method solves a discretized Boltzmann equation that describes the evolution of particle distribution functions on Cartesian grids. Whilst modeling essentially similar physics as Navier-Stokes procedures, LBM features a number of performance-related advantages, particularly concerning data locality and parallel computing. The presented LBM solver elbe [1,2] uses graphics processing units (GPUs) to accelerate the hydrodynamic computations and allows for simulations near real-time.
After a quick presentation of the basics of
the LBM, the talk will focus on the concepts
for an application of elbe to the simulation
of violent free surface flows and wave-struc-
ture interactions. Floating body motions are
commonly performed by using deforming
meshes or rigid moving grids or a
combination of the two. In case of the LBM,
Figure 1. A Tsunami wave hits New York which operates on fixed, equidistant and (computer simulation with elbe, 2E7 grid nodes, FDS, TUHH) Cartesian grids, the grid update (i.e. remeshing) reduces to the calculation of subgrid distances of the Eulerian lattice nodes to the surface of the structure [3].
Similarly, complex bathymetry and topology information can be considered in the simulations. The floating body motions themselves are described by a quaternion motion modeler [4] or a PE physics engine [5], that are coupled to the LBM in a bidirectional, explicit manner.
Several state-of-the-art validation cases will be presented at the workshop to show that the proposed numerical methodology is able to reproduce accurate results for wave impact problems and wavestructure interactions, in a very competitive computational time. Hence, the elbe solver can be a viable tool for fast and efficient simulations of complex, potentially violent flows, such as Tsunami waves and debris flow.
References
[1] C. Janssen et al., The efficient lattice boltzmann environment elbe. http://www.tuhh.de/elbe.
[2] C. Janssen and M. Krafcyzk, Free surface flow simulations on GPUs using the LBM. Computers & Mathematics with Applications, 61 (12), pp. 3549-3563, 2011.
[3] N. Koliha, C. Janssen and T. Rung, A fast and rigorously parallel surface voxelization technique for GPGPU-accelerated CFD simulations. Submitted to Communications in Computational Physics.
[4] N. Koliha and T. Rung, Development of a quaternion-based 6-DOF model for the simulation of floating bodies. Bachelor thesis, Schriftenreihe Schiffbau, Hamburg University of Technology, 2011.
[5] K. Iglberger and U. Rüde, Large-scale Rigid Body Simulations. Multibody System Dynamics, 25 (1), p. 81-95,
20 Modeling hazards from seismic and SMF sources
James Kirby, Center for Applied Coastal Research, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of
Delaware
This talk addresses three aspects of ongoing work with colleagues at the University of Delaware and collaborating institu-
tions. The first part of the talk discusses ongoing hazard analysis and inundation mapping being carried out across the US
by the NTHMP program, with special attention to our own work on the US East Coast. Work in this area involves analysis of
distant sources, for which detection by seismic inversion and conventional DART buoy technology is the assumed warning
approach. However, a significant proportion of our work is aimed at analyzing large scale SMF events, which are known
to have a weak link to seismic signal characteristics and hence present unique problems for detection and warning. The
talk will describe several east Coast SMF scenarios in order to establish notions about arrival times and impacts of wide
continental shelf geometries, which are likely to be distinct from western Canadian settings.
The second part of the talk will focus on the modeling technology employed to describe tsunami generation, propagation
and inundation. Application of the Boussinesq model FUNWAVE to propagation and inundation modeling will be described.
The use of a recently-developed, 3D nonhydrostatic model NHWAVE to describe initial tsunami generation during both
seismic and SMF events will be described, and recent work on extending the model to describe deformable slides using a
number of approaches will be discussed.
Finally, to highlight the potentially important need for detection of SMF events occurring in conjunction with seismic
events, we present a hypothesis for an SMF-related mechanism for the generation of high local runup values along the
Sanriku coastline during the 2011 Tohoku-oki tsunami. Our scenario involves the utilization of conventional seismic
and GPS inversions to describe the main event and it’s long distance tsunami signature, together with an SMF event
geo-located and scaled by travel time arrivals and amplitudes at GPS buoys that produces the observed coastal runup and
eliminates the need for invoking a poorly understood slow-slip mechanism.
21 Assessing the tsunami hazard of the British Columbia coastline
1 2 Lucinda Leonard , Garry Rogers
1 2 School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Univ. Victoria, Natural Resources Canada
I will present the results of our recent tsunami hazard assessment for the British Columbia coastline. This assessment is useful in terms of illustrating the relative importance of the various potential tsunami sources (including local and distant earthquakes and landslides) and it provides estimates of the recurrence of damaging tsunami waves for different parts of the coastline. The validity of our mainly empirical approach has been confirmed by run-up measurements of the 2012
Haida Gwaii tsunami.
I will also discuss the limitations of this preliminary assessment, and the studies that are needed in order to provide communities with appropriate information for planning and risk-assessment purposes. It is important to determine not just how often damaging tsunami waves may occur, but how large these waves may be at specific locations. The amplifi- cation of waves from the 1964 Alaskan tsunami in Alberni Inlet (and other long narrow inlets) is a good example of how certain locations are more at risk than others. Of critical importance is the determination of the maximum wave height that could be expected.
The main factors affecting local tsunami wave height include variations in (1) the source (e.g., along-strike differences in seafloor rupture), and (2) the tsunami’s travel path to specific locations (affected by the shape of the seafloor and the coastline). Modelling studies are needed that address both types of variations, particularly for the source most hazardous to BC: Cascadia subduction zone earthquakes. Modelling will require use of detailed bathymetry and onland topography data to sufficiently estimate the extent of inundation from a range of tsunami scenarios.
Tsunami Modeling and Inundation Mapping in Alaska: Development of maximum credible tsunami scenarios
1 1 2 1 Dmitry Nicolsky , Elena Suleimani , Richard Koehler , Jeffrey T. Freymueller
1 Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA
2 Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys, Fairbanks, USA
The Alaska Earthquake Center (AEC) conducts tsunami inundation mapping for coastal communities distributed along several segments of the Aleutian Megathrust and the Queen Charlotte-Fairweather fault system. Each fault segment is characterized by a unique seismic history and tsunami generation potential. A critical component in the tsunami modeling
22 is accurate identification and characterization of potential tsunami sources.
We present a technique to develop maximum credible tsunami scenarios for locations that have short or nonexistent
paleoseismic/paleotsunami records, and lack modern seismic and GPS data. We employ the USGS plate interface model
and its discretization into a set of rectangle subfaults, empirical magnitude-slip relationships, and a numerical code that
distributes slip among various subfault elements. We also show how to take into account paleoseismic information on
uplift and subsidence as well as slip deficit models in areas where extensive GPS campaign surveys were conducted.
We perform simulations for each source scenario using AEC’s numerical model of tsunami propagation and runup, which
is validated through a set of analytical benchmarks and tested against laboratory and field data. Results of numerical
modeling combined with historical observations are compiled on inundation maps and used for site-specific tsunami
hazard assessment by local emergency planners.
In the wake of the 2011 Tohoku Tsunami: Modeling of tsunami wave propagation and evacuation. Research efforts at Tohoku University and the University of Hawaii.
1 2 2 2 1 Erick Mas , Yoshiki Yamazaki , Yefei Bai , Kwok Fai Cheung , Volker Roeber
1 International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), Sendai, JAPAN
2 Department of Ocean & Resources Engineering, University of Hawaii and Manoa, Honolulu, USA
The 2011 Tohoku tsunami devastated the northeastern Japan coasts and caused localized damage to coastal infrastruc-
ture across the Pacific. We investigated the Tohoku tsunami with respect to its source mechanism and wave propagation
in the Pacific. A closer look at specific locations such as Hawaii showed that the tsunami resulted in strong currents that
led to closure of harbors and marinas for up to 38 h after its arrival. We utilize a non-hydrostatic model to reconstruct the
tsunami event from the seismic source for elucidation of the physical processes and inference of the coastal hazards. A
number of tide gauges, bottom pressure sensors, and ADCPs provided point measurements for validation and assessment
of the model results in Hawaii. Spectral analysis of the computed surface elevation and current reveals complex flow
patterns due to multi-scale resonance. Standing waves with 33–75 min period develop along the island chains, while oscil-
lations of 27 min or shorter are primarily confined to an island or an island group with interconnected shelves. Standing
edge waves with periods of 16 min or shorter, which are able to form nodes on the reefs and inside harbors, are the
main driving force of the observed coastal currents. Resonance and constructive interference of the oscillation modes
provide an explanation of the impacts observed in Hawaii with implications for emergency management in Pacific island
communities.
23 Numerical modeling gives researchers better understanding of the physics of tsunami events. In the recent years, a new field of tsunami science has evolved to directly address hazard mitigation through modeling of complex social behavior. In practice, organizing recurrent evacuation drills in a community demands budget, resources and community participation.
Instead, numerical and social models can be used as a tool to explore mitigation policies, residents’ behavior, disaster impact, etc.
We will demonstrate the strengths and limitations of tsunami evacuation simulation by introducing an agent-based model as an example of a disaster mitigation tool. Tsunami evacuation simulation contributes to the analysis of future implemen- tations on tsunami mitigation and countermeasures (i.e. new infrastructure for sheltering, social education, emergency support, etc.). Case studies such as bottleneck and congestion analysis in evacuation routes, demand and spatial distribu- tion of shelters, human behavior in case of emergencies and casualty estimation due to tsunamis, will be presented.
Utilizing power of present and future open-ocean tsunami monitoring networks
Elena Tolkova, NorthWest Research Associates, USA
A tsunami forecasting technique is presented which allows to use tsunami observations in the region for providing fast local forecasts. The suggested technique:
• provides a prediction independent of the tsunami source estimate;
• increases accuracy of predicting the first arriving as well as later waves using off-shore tsunami measurements
close to the target area;
• allows for checking the accuracy of the conventional inversion-based forecast before the wave hits the coast.
This technique relies on a formalism of direction-specific response functions describing tsunami wave transformation at a regional scale introduced in (Power and Tolkova, 2013). It was demonstrated that the measurements of an approaching trans-oceanic tsunami taken in the open ocean as far as 1000 km off-shore can be directly converted into the wave time history at the coast with a straightforward computation which can be performed almost instantaneously. This technique
has been successfully dem-
onstrated for the coast of
New Zealand and California.
For instance, numerical
simulations showed that a
single station northeast of the Left: record of the 2012/10/28 Haida Gwaii tsunami at DART 46411; right: the tsunami record at Monterey tide gage (red) and its forecast (blue). The forecast is been made as the wave is been Chatham Islands might be registered at the DART one hour before arriving at the gage.
24 sufficient to accurately predict the tsunami wave at the east shore of North Island, New Zealand about 2 h in advance, for
a tsunami originating anywhere on Central/ South America subduction zone.
Today, existing instrumentation permits the use of the suggested technique in Alaska and the West Coast of the Unites
States, where an approaching far-field tsunami is first registered at DART stations situated along the coast at an average
distance of 370 km from land. It can also be used with tsunami detectors in cabled underwater networks where available.
Future instrumentation on submarine communication cables will supply larger selection of open-ocean measurements
and many more opportunities for this method.
References
W. Power and E. Tolkova. Forecasting tsunamis in Poverty Bay, New Zealand, with deep-ocean gauges. Ocean Dynamics, Vol. 63, Issue 11 (2013), pp. 1213-1232; doi: 10.1007/ s10236-013-0665-6
Indian Tsunami Early Warning System
Dr. T. Srinivasa Kumar
Indian National Tsunami Early Warning Centre, Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, Earth System
Sciences Organisation, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India
Until December 2004, not many people in India were aware of tsunami and its devastating capacity to washout coastal
areas. The great Sumatra earthquake (Mw 9.3) of 26th December, 2004 generated a tsunami which exposed the vulner-
ability of the Indian coastline and caused unprecedented loss of life and damage to property in the Indian Ocean rim
countries. In response to this, the Government of India established the Indian Tsunami Early Warning System (ITEWS), with
the warning centre operating from the Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad, India.
The Indian Tsunami Early Warning System comprises a real-time network of seismic stations, Bottom Pressure Recorders
(BPR), tide gauges and 24 X 7 operational Warning Centre to detect tsunamigenic earthquakes, to monitor tsunamis and
to provide timely advisories to vulnerable communities. The Warning Centre is capable of issuing Tsunami bulletins in less
than 10 minutes after any major earthquake in the Indian Ocean thus providing a response/lead time of about 10 – 20
minutes for near source regions and a few hours in the case of far source regions. Timely tsunami advisories (Warning /
Alert / Watch) are disseminated to the vulnerable community using Decision Support System developed based on one of
its kind Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).
The criteria for generation of tsunami advisories (Warning / Alert / Watch) for a particular region of the coast are based
on the available warning time (i.e. time taken by the tsunami wave to reach the particular coast). The Indian Warning
25 Criteria are based on the premise that coastal areas falling within 60 minutes travel time from a tsunamigenic earthquake source need to be warned based solely on earthquake information, since enough time will not be available for confirma- tion of water levels from BPRs and Tide Gauges. Those coastal areas falling outside the 60 minutes travel time from a tsunamigenic earthquake source could be put under a watch status and upgraded to a warning only upon confirmation of water-level data. This implies that while the possibility of false alarms is comparatively more for areas close to the earthquake source, for far source regions the rate of false alarms is less, since the warnings are issued only after con- firmation of tsunami from water-level data. To reduce the rate of false alarms even in the near source regions bulletins are generated by analysing pre-run model scenarios and issued only to those coastal locations that are at risk. Based on the estimated water levels and travel times, the coastal areas are categorized into either being under Warning (Major
Tsunami), Alert (Medium Tsunami), Watch (Minor Tsunami) or No Threat.
Warning Centre disseminates tsunami advisories to various stakeholders through multiple dissemination modes simul- taneously (Fax, Phone, Emails, GTS and SMS etc.). Earthquake information, tsunami bulletins as well as real-time sea level observations are also made available on a dedicated website for officials, public and media. Users can also register on the website for receiving earthquake alerts and tsunami bulletins through emails and SMS. The ITEWC serves not only as a national tsunami warning centre for India, but also as a Tsunami Advisory Service Provider (TSP) for the Indian Ocean
Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (ICG/IOTWS), which is responsible for providing Tsunami advisories to all IOTWS member States. Future work is focussed towards water level inversion, real-time inundation modelling, use of near-field
GNSS measurements for real-time rupture characterisation and 3D mapping of vulnerable coastal areas.
Cascadia Megathrust Rupture Models for Tsunami Modelling
Kelin Wang, Pacific Geoscience Centre, Geological Survey of Canada
Details of megathrust earthquake models are very important for calculating the impact of tsunami waves on local coastal areas. One issue of concern is fault geometry: a change of a few degrees in fault dip or using a plane to represent a curved fault gives rise to a large change in predicted seafloor uplift. An equally critical issue is the distribution of slip along the shallow part of the fault: A sudden termination of slip at a shallow depth, a gradual termination, and a rupture that breaches the seafloor produce dramatically different seafloor displacement patterns. These details are poorly known for any subduction earthquake, even for the best observed 2011 M9 Tohoku-Oki earthquake. For assessing local tsunami hazards associated with a future Cascadia megathrust earthquake, it is necessary to consider a variety of geometrical and slip scenarios that are consistent with fault mechanics, geological structure, evidence for previous earthquake and tsunami events, and lessons learned from instrumentally recorded subduction earthquakes elsewhere in the world.
Cascadia rupture models developed in the 1990’s and early 2000’s typically feature a shallow zone of uniform slip (the
26 full-rupture zone) with a deeper zone over which the slip tapers to zero (the transition zone). These simple models are
adequate for calculating tsunami waves arriving on a remote coast, such as the waves in Japan caused by the great
Cascadia earthquake in AD 1700. They are also useful for predicting a general pattern of tsunami waves at local coasts
along the Cascadia margin. Later models, particularly those used by the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral
Industries (DOGAMI) for tsunami hazard assessment along the Oregon coast, feature more realistic scenarios. The
DOGAMI models consider two types of fault geometry: a megathrust with or without a splay fault which diverts the
shallow rupture upward. The 3D megathrust geometry is based on geophysical imaging, and the location and geometry
of the splay fault are based on interpretations of geological and seismic imaging data. The slip distribution along the
megathrust in the downdip direction is assumed to have a bell shape, with the slip peaking in the central part but tapering
to zero updip and downdip. The assumed updip decrease in coseismic slip toward the deformation front (“trench”) is
based on the classical fault model in which the shallowest segment resists seismic rupture but slips aseismically after the
earthquake. The Tohoku-Oki earthquake which exhibited dramatic trench-breaching rupture challenges the universality
of the classical fault model, and the seismic potential of the shallowest part of the Cascadia megathrust needs to be
reassessed. Most Cascadia rupture models assume a rather uniform slip pattern along strike. Recent microfossil data
suggest strong variations of coseismic slip along the Cascadia margin during the AD 1700 great earthquake, similar to any
other instrumentally recorded subduction earthquakes. The importance of such heterogeneous slip to tsunami modeling
at Cascadia is yet to be understood.
The Activities of the US Tsunami Warning Centers During the Haida Gwaii Tsunami
Dr. Stuart A. Weinstein, NOAA/NWS Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, USA
The Oct. 28, 2012 Haida Gwaii Mw 7.8 earthquake was the largest earthquake to strike Canada since 1958, and the second
largest instrumentally recorded earthquake within Canadian Territory. This earthquake and subsequent tsunami had
characteristics that proved challenging for the US Tsunami Warning Centers (TWCs). For starters, the plate boundary upon
which the earthquake occurred was thought to produce earthquakes with a predominantly oblique strike-slip mechanism.
Hence no DART buoys were deployed in this region. There was also a dearth of near real-time sea-level data from coastal
areas in close proximity to the earthquake. In addition, a delay of around 10-15s in the onset of the main moment release
of the earthquake contributed to the TWC’s underestimating the size of the earthquake in the first three to four minutes.
The initial estimate of the magnitude, 7.1, exceeded the US National Tsunami Warning Center’s (NTWC) threshold for
issuing a warning; hence a warning was issued for an area surrounding the immediate vicinity of the earthquake. After
more analysis both US TWC’s obtained a larger magnitude of 7.7. At this point the NTWC placed the region to the south
of the warning area in an advisory. About two hours later when larger waves than expected were recorded by the DART
27 buoys and models showed the main beam of energy pointing towards Hawaii, the US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center
(PTWC) issued a warning for the state of Hawaii. This was the first time in recent memory where Hawaii was the only
region placed in a warning status for an earthquake occurring on the Pacific Rim by PTWC. The event came to an end when
PTWC issued a warning cancellation for the State of Hawaii some 7.5 hours after the earthquake.
Fortunately, no destructive tsunami was observed in Hawaii or along Canadian and the Northwest US coasts. The maximum
observed amplitude on sea-level stations in Hawaii was 0.8m at Kahului, Maui. However, one of the hardest hit areas, the
North Shore of Molokai did not have any functioning sea-level stations. Observations on the North Shore of Molokai do
suggest runups exceeded one meter in some places. These observations bear out a prediction of the forecast models
suggesting that Maui and Molokai would be the hardest hit coastlines in Hawaii. Indeed, these shores were perhaps the
hardest hit by the tsunami anywhere outside the immediate vicinity of the earthquake itself.
I will present a detailed timeline of the events and challenges faced by the US TWCs during the course of this event.
28 Summary of Discussions
Instrumentation
Peter Anderson, Jan Buermans, Tom Dakin, Martin Heesemann, Joe Henton, Garry Rogers, Andreas Rosenberger, Michael
Schmidt, Tummala Srinivasa Kumar
Summary
Tsunami detection instrumentation have two uses. On one hand they provide ground truth data for models. This data can
be compiled into a library of various events, which can be used to evaluate models. On the other hand, the real-time data
of directly measured displacements can also provide the initial conditions and constraints for choosing a pre-run model
to suit the existing event and estimate the impending impacts. As more real-time data comes in from the entire network
sophisticated users can refine the impact assessment over time.
The library of data for models is especially valuable for propagation and shoaling teletsunamis models. This library is
useful for developing the models as well as assessing the accuracy of the models. One important data set for impact
assessment is a map of the seafloor displacement.
This discussion group defined the requirements for the instrumentation as well as the considerations required for correct
detection of events.
Technical requirements
The distribution of the array of sensors is a key part of the detection. In the case of an earthquake, at least three P-wave
detections are needed to estimate the epicenter. Japan is so far the only country with a near field system based on a high
number of strong motion sensors distributed widely, densely and with exceptional reliability for the communications
from the sensors. Their target response is two to three minutes.
In the case of the coast of British Columbia, a combination of land and shore based seismometers would be the ideal
combination for rapid estimation of source parameters. The use of real-time GPS co-located with strong motion sensors
on land would provide the optimal data set of motion and displacement.
Currently Ocean Networks Canada is working on a Web-enabled Awareness Research Network (WARN) system that will
speed up the warning process. In this system, when an event is detected by three sensors calculations are triggered to
detect the epicenter and magnitude of the event. WARN has the ability to look for correlations of both, movement and
29 direction of the co-seismic displacements. Multiple sensors need to be included in this system, such as strong motion
sensors, seismometers, accelerometers, geophones, bottom pressure recorders (BPRs) on both sides of the fault, GPS on
land for ground displacement direction and magnitude, tilt meters and dilatometers for measurements of strain. An ideal
distribution of the instruments would have BPRs and seismometers located in lines perpendicular to the coast with 10km
spacing of sensors in the lines.
Technical considerations
Due to the infrastructure and servicing costs of subsea sensors land based sensors provide detection at a lowest price.
However they also provide the minimal warning time. The major cost factor for submarine installations is the infrastruc-
ture, which makes the cost of the sensors look cheap in comparison. Therefore, the cost of the sensors should not be a
factor in choosing technologies for the coast of British Columbia, since the observatories are already in operation, this
significantly reduces the initial investment. Laying out cable is a major technical impediment to submarine operations. Key
measurements should take place along the shelf, in the continental slope for Cascadia.
One limitation related to the use of cabled observatories is the possibility of cable breakage due to the earth motion. The
reliability of a cabled system during major local events is questionable. The rupture expected for this area is hundreds
of kilometers long and on the order of 15 to 20 km wide. The rupture will propagate at a rate of 2 to 3 km/s if everything
moves in the same direction. Another issue for reliability is trawling fisheries in the area. The sensors deployed for early
warning need to have resistant frames to avoid damages in this context.
Event Detection and confirmation
In the event of an earthquake, seismometers are able to detect the primary and secondary waves. The sensors and
infrastructure used for a reliable system need to be distributed in a dense network able to detect the event even during
strong motion. The communication system needs also to be reliable during a catastrophic event. An example of a reliable
communications system is the BGEAN satellite.
The event confirmation relies on multiple instruments including GPS, strong motion seismometers and seafloor geodesy
instrumentation such as tiltmeters, dilatometers that can measure volumetric strain and bottom pressure recorders
(BPRs). The strong motion sensors should be collocated with BPRs or GPS. The installation of some of the sensors on land
may be better for the reliability of the system; however, marine installations are also required for early event detection.
The study of small tsunamis and far field tsunamis is key to calibrate the models.
The team identified different types of sensors based on their use in terrestrial versus marine environments as well as
their use for studying near and far field tsunamis. The major instrumentation discussed is represented on the table below.
30 Near Field Far Field Terrestrial • Collocated GNSS (e.g. GPS) and strong motion sensors (real time) Tide gauges
• Tide gauges (real time)
• Coastal radar Marine • Strong motion accelerometers and geophones (real time) BPRs
• Bottom Pressure Recorders (BPRs) array
• Tiltmeters (real time)
• Hydrophones for landslides
• Seafloor geodesy (acoustic GPS)
• Strain meters
The displacement in terrestrial environments for near field tsunamis can be measured with GPS and strong motion sensors
such as seismometers or accelerometers. The GPS data needs accumulative measurements. This system can provide
good data in 60-90 seconds and accurate data in 3 minutes. The GPS and strong motion sensors need to be co-located.
The tidal gauges can provide important information for historical events. The coastal radar may provide confirmation of
the predictions. As in every tsunami detection system, it is important to have redundancy of instruments.
In the case of the terrestrial far field detection, the first warnings will come from tsunami centers in the Pacific, and the
sensors from Ocean Networks Canada will provide confirmation. The tide gauges for far field detection need to be located
at critical points along the coast and at the mouth and inland of the inlets to measure the magnification of the wave. The
systems should be distributed along the whole coast of British Columbia in a coarse spacing to help with the assessment.
The wave propagation needs to be measured with tide gauges distributed from North to South along the coast with
sufficient density to supply the model library with wavelength and wave height data. The location of the BPRs and tidal
gauges is critical and need to be located in areas of high impact such as Tofino, Port Alberni and Uclulet.
Potential sources for far field tsunamis for our coast are Hawaii, Alaska, Japan and South America. Two Alaskan areas
are of particular interest since the stresses in these areas have been building without relief. The bathymetry is a key
component of the models and in particular for inlets such as Tahsis, Port Alberni and Port Renfrew. The location of
BPRs and tide gauges at mouth and headwater are important to determine the waveheight multiplier effect of inlets. It
would be necessary to increase the collaboration between NOAA and Ocean Networks Canada, so that both systems can
exchange alerts and real time data from instruments.
In the case of marine far field tsunamis the location of the BPRs is related to their capability of detection from different
locations. In the case of propagation from North to South there is no coverage. Tsunamis propagating from South to
North are detected by the DART buoys. The NEPTUNE cabled observatory is able to detect tsunamis that are propagating
from West to East, and in a similar way, the near field data from the NEPTUNE observatory could be sent to Hawaii.
31 The most relevant seismic frequencies for the detection of these events is mostly below 10 Hz, with far field events from
0.1 Hz to 2 Hz and near field events varying between 0.1 Hz and 60 Hz .
For near field tsunamis in the marine environment tidal gauges, BPRs and mini-observatories with tidal gauges were
identified as the main independent instruments for detection. Several other instruments can be used as part of the cabled
network. These include strain meters (piezometers and fiber strain sensors), hydrophones for underwater landslides,
seismometers, accelerometers, tilt meters, acoustic GPS, geophones and BPRs. The BPRs need to be co-located with
strong motion and tiltmeters in lines perpendicular to shore.
A question was raised during the discussion about the capability of the network to receive data from 100+ km away
from the network nodes in an effort to expand the spatial coverage of sensors. One possibility is the use of long range
low bandwidth acoustic links. Another option is the use of satellites such as Iridium, BJAM and GOOS (used by NOAA) for
terrestrial sensors or where there is a surface expression for sub-sea sensors.
Another factor to be considered in the case of the coast of British Columbia is the detection of landslides. Submarine
landslides can be detected in real time with hydrophones. A team at Natural Resources Canada is studying slip failure and
multibeam data needs to be collected after a submarine landslide to ground truth the event.
Earthquake Source Definition
Jörn Behrens, Herb Dragert, Tania L. Insua, Dmitry Nicolsky, Roe Markham, Kelin Wang
Summary
One of the discussion groups during this workshop has focused on definition of the earthquake sources near British
Columbia. The group covered three major components of the earthquake source definition. Namely, the fault mechanics,
rupture scenarios and real time tsunami source estimation were analyzed. Uncertainties and the need of further research
were pointed out when the group considered that this was a limitation to forecast tsunamis in the area.
Fault mechanics
Paleoseismic records reveal that great tsunamigenic earthquakes repeatedly occur in the Cascadia subduction zone with
irregular intervals averaging about 500 years (Atwater, 1987), often accompanied by a tsunami. The latest trans-Pacific
tsunami generated by an earthquake at Cascadia occurred in January 1700 (Satake et al. 1996; Atwater et al. 2005). Multiple
models of the Cascadia zone rupture are suggested by Satake et al. (2003) and Priest et al. (2009) and in references
32 therein. These models describe hypothetical coseismic displacement fields of the Cascadia rupture, with various levels
of detail. Tsunami heights in Japanese historical records can constrain the slip distance of the 1700 Cascadia earthquake
(Satake et al, 1996), but do not well constrain the downdip limit of the rupture (Wang et al, 2003).
Although the Cascadia subduction zone ruptured about 300 years ago, it still has the great potential to generate tsunamis
along shore of British Columbia. The discussion group indicated the lack of sampling in the area to constrain the physics
behind the megathrust mechanics. The Nootka Fault and the Explorer plate in the Cascadia subduction zone are still
unknown areas. The rupture behavior of the shallowest part of the megathrust is one of the research topics that should
be addressed as soon as possible in order to have a better understanding of the source. The downdip limit of the rupture
zone is not well defined for Cascadia, and estimations vary from deep to shallow rupture on a broad range. The uncertainty
on the slip distribution limits the model complexity that can be used for the source, and therefore it affects the outputs
from the tsunami modeling. Complex models require more detailed inputs that come from research that needs to be
developed for the British Columbia coast.
The group also emphasized slow ruptures that typically happen far offshore, and their prevalence in the B.C. area is still
unknown. They are, in general, rare events such as a 2006 Mw 7.7 event that generated the devastating tsunami in Java.
Thus, earthquake generated tsunamis in the British Columbia coast require near-shore tsunami monitoring and the wave
generated may be larger than expected based on the magnitude of the earthquake. More in-depth knowledge in the
sediment and fault zone reology and fluid pressure is needed for Cascadia. The fault zone structure, dynamic weakening
and the time for the healing of faults in this area are not well defined.
The sensitivity of the different models should be tested in advance to identify and prioritize major areas of research
that need to be addressed. The instrument sensitivity to other signals should also be modeled, for example, cryogenic
gravimeters were able to detect a Haida Gwaii hydrogeological effect.
Along the process of determining the earthquake source definition there are multiple uncertainties that add to each
other such as the variability of the base data, the modeling uncertainty, etc. The sensitivity of the rupture mechanisms is
complex and the outputs for tsunami modeling are dependent on the particular case. Fully dynamic rupture models with
a solid fluid interaction can define the system and help to address the sensitivities. These models can also be useful to
validate simple models used for real time predictions (see ASCETE project: http://www.ascete.de).
Rupture scenarios
Tsunamigenic rupture scenarios are geological plausible rupture scenarios that specify the rupture dimensions (up-dip
and down-dip depths), maximum and average slip as well as the slip distribution.
There are some observational constraints to this such as the regional framework and seismotectonics of the area, which
may not be well defined as in the case of the Explorer plate area. Paleoseismic evidence can help to reduce uncertainties
33 in this framework as well as interseismic long term GPS records that would indicate potential patterns of the co-seismic
deformations. Turbidite records can indicate the recurrence of these events, although they do not provide much
information about the rupture. Geophysical imaging can provide geometry of the megathrust structure and address the
possibility of splay faulting affecting ruptures in this area.
Different models can be applied to generate a source from rupture scenarios. Static models can be done using an elastic
half-space but they cannot justify more complex geometries which require more extensive input data. Finite element
models can be used to produce a more sophisticated output based on multilayer applications. Another catagory of models
that can be used is kinematic time dependent rupture models.
Real time source definition
When fault geometry is assumed for the generation of the source signal, the inverted model can be done in real time
to estimate rupture size and slip magnitude. Based on these parameters, deformation can be determined. However
numerous assumptions are made that can affect the uncertainty of the source. When a wave is measured more directly,
as for example by GPS buoys or pressure sensors, some of these uncertainties are directly addressed.
The discussion group mentioned that there are multiple measurements that can be used to define the source. It is
possible to use seismic networks, real-time GPS, seafloor pressure sensors, borehole strainmeters and pore pressure
sensors. A number of these sensors are currently operational along the coast of British Columbia, including multiple
real-time GPS stations from Natural Resources Canada, several borehole strainmeters from UNAVCO , together with the
Ocean Networks Canada sensors. A lack of coordination for the combined use of all these sensors in a tsunami detection
system is apparent. Arrival times from different instruments can help to invert back to the source, however, the required
calculations can take over five minutes. This can be a limitation for the system that ONC is trying to test.
There are different real-time inversion techniques for this problem. One technique is based on unit-source based linear
inversion relying on off-shore wave gauges proposed by Wei et al. (2008). This approach is very successful in far field
tsunami forecasting and can beneficially be combined with real-time local inundation modeling. The other approach by
Behrens et al. (2010) uses a rigorous uncertainty model to reduce forecast error in very short time based on diverse (but
initially few) data records. This approach is bound to pre-computed scenarios, but is well-suited for near-field tsunami
early warning.
Projects under development currently that could be included in an ideal system to detect and forecast tsunamis include
the seafloor tilt-meters being developed by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. These sensors could be connected to
the NEPTUNE observatory. Fiber optic cable strainmeters developed by a team from University of Miami and University of
Ottawa with industry partners are currently in testing phase and could provide more insights on source definition.
34 HF radar based wave-detection stations can provide reliable information about sea level anomalies and could readily
be included into the multi-sensor forecasting approach. HF radar can be utilized in a multitude of applications and can
easily be used for ocean current observations, tidal current monitoring and even ship traffic monitoring outside of the
(rare) tsunami hazard event. Algorithmic developments for accurate wave pattern detection and derivation of amplitude
information would be necessary to maximize the gain from this instrument class.
Combined GPS/acoustic geodetic measurements at sea (Burgmann and Chadwell, 2014) are also under development.
Surface GPS systems can monitor the position and dynamics of gliders on the ocean surface while simultaneous acoustic
ranging is carried out to seafloor transponders. These systems could measure motion and kinematics of the seafloor at
the time of the event. GPS located on buoys provide information strictly about the tsunami, not the rupture, although data
processing can help to infer the rupture. GPS located on boats can provide wave information in a similar fashion to a buoy.
Other signals that could be considered for future phases of the tsunami detection system are satellite altimetry and the
atmospheric signature from earthquakes.
A major concern that is still not well addressed for early warning tsunami systems is the presence and effect of submarine
landslides.
References
Atwater, B.F., 1987, Evidence for great Holocene earthquakes along the outer coast of Washington state: Science, v. 236, p. 942–944.
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35 Tsunami modeling
Ali Abdolali, Marie Eble, Josef Cherniawsky, Isaac Fine, Jannette Frandsen, Jeffrey Harris, Maia Hoeberechts, Jim Kirby,
Hannan Lohrasbi, Scott McLean, Steve Mihaly, Alexander Rabinovich, Volker Roeber, Fred Stephenson, Elena Tolkova,
Christina Waddle, Onat Yazir
Summary
The tsunami modelling breakout group had an open discussion focused in answering multiple questions about the imple-
mentation of the models, including limitations and requirements. The views of the different experts included in this group
are captured on this summary.
The group discussed the need for improvement on detection of tsunami, wave propagation, and inundation maps as well
as on modelling and computational requirements.
General conclusions indicated the need for accurate topography and bathymetry as a key step in the process of getting
better models and as a particularly limiting factor for the coast of British Columbia. Currently, the propagation models
are not a limitation for tsunami forecasting in deep waters, where linear approximations can be used, but the source
modelling and the propagation during inundation are more complex. Inundation models are particularly important in
near-field tsunamis like the one expected along our coast. The effect of shallow water and small basins on the inundation
is an important research area that affects the results of inundation models.
Ocean Networks Canada as a leader of this initiative needs a repository of models, algorithms, data input types and
output types. These pieces are the base to test and build an environment where we can use the model on our coast. The
group proposed to compare actual data with model outputs from different research teams over the world that could help
to validate different models against each other. The real time observations such as the ones obtained by the NEPTUNE
observatory, should fit into the models to achieve a better knowledge of the propagation of the wave. The benchmark
testing could be referred to a specific case (e.g. Haida Gwaii) or be a generic study that could be tested in different areas.
The team also discussed the best way to accumulate the data not only to verify the accuracy of models with past events
but also to best forecast future events. Existing NEPTUNE sensors provide good information on wave paths for far field
tsunamis; however, the network needs new approaches and an increase in sensors for near-field tsunami detection. The
determination of the source is one of the major limitations in near field events.
36 What requirements should each model fulfill in order to implement it for the BC coast?
A discussion was centered in the need to improve benchmark standards, since these standards are not sufficient
with testing being too lax, especially if there is a high level of complexity. Two major research fields were identified as
challenging for tsunami forecasts: velocity and wave propagation in complex coastlines where reflection takes a major
role. Benchmark testing against real data is a difficult task and normally lab experiments are set up for benchmarking
models where simplified cases are studied.
When a model is transferred from one area to another, the equations are the same but the application to a complex coast
like British Columbia needs to be tested. However, the generic nature of most of the models should make them useful for
this coast. Bathymetry is a key component for the success of this adaptation. Land based data is also important but easier
to acquire and therefore it is not as limiting as bathymetry data.
Modellers need to agree on criteria to evaluate the performance of models for a benchmark test. Models can be plugged
in a test bed and compared against actual data. The initial objective for a warning from this workshop was the ability
of generating a warning in 2 minutes. The experts in the workshop identified this objective as very ambitious, since the
existing systems take longer time to evaluate the event.
What inputs and quality of data are needed for these models?
The team of experts attending the workshop indicated that a 7 m (~1/3 arc second) grid resolution for the bathymetry
off the coast of British Columbia would cover the needs but it would be a grid of a considerable size for the analysis. A
modification to this approach would be to use coastal relief models such as the ones used by NGDC http://www.ngdc.(
noaa.gov/mgg/coastal/crm.html) at a 3 seconds resolution. All the data available for bathymetry needs to be gridded up
and referred to a consistent datum. In the case of topography, mostly based on LIDAR, less than 1 m resolution is needed
to have accurate tsunami forecasts. The data necessary for the project should at least cover 50 km off the coast for
detailed bathymetry The entire width of the continental shelf should be available with at least a 10 seconds grid. The team
indicated that a good review in general terms of the necessary inputs is available in Yeh (1998).
The experts indicated the need of benchmark testing for structures and also the difficulty of knowing the cause of inac-
curacies in the inundation models. Wave records from previous events are necessary to evaluate models.
Changes in the bathymetry can alter the accuracy of the models and therefore data needs to be updated and reviewed
regularly. For example, a sand bar area that is dynamically changing should be regularly revisited. The workshop attendees
recommend doing a sensitivity test for the bathymetry versus the topography for the inundation maps. The effect of a
smaller grid in bathymetry may be less important than the effects of the topography after certain requirements for grid
size are fulfilled for the bathymetry. The team also indicated that a sensor sampling-rate of one second was good for the
models that they are using.
37 What software, hardware, or systems would be needed to implement these models?
Most of the models used currently in tsunami science require relatively conventional hardware, except those using GPU
clusters. Programming languages are variable among the different teams that met during this workshop. They offered to
provide more detailed information on each model after this meeting. It was suggested that ONC develop a questionnaire
to send to modellers for this information.
How could these models be integrated with the existing and future real time sensors from Ocean Networks Canada?
Tsunami events have been detected by the Ocean Networks Canada infrastructure in the past. In particular, the current
meter located at Barkley Canyon and multiple Bottom Pressure Recorders (BPRs) detected the Tohoku tsunami in 2011.
The team of experts suggested the addition of a current meter to the mini-observatory in the Alberni Inlet. The Alberni
Inlet area is a generally calm area that has shown the importance of coastal features. The modelling discussion group
requested additional sensors to be added to this area in order to get better Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) and
hydrophone measurements. These new sensors would be used not only for validation of models but also for real time
detection.
Other instrumentation such as gravimeters were also considered as a useful tool. Ocean Networks Canada has one
available that could be deployed at Cascadia, adding to the network to detect tsunamis.
The current sampling for the ADCPs and BPRs is one second, and their capability of detection is 0.1mm at 1Hz. These
sensors have been able to detect tsunami waves from far field tsunamis in the past.
Global Positioning Systems (GPS) would be a good addition to the Ocean Networks Canada system. GPS systems have
demonstrated strong capabilities for the detection of horizontal motion in the case of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
There is currently an existing GPS network on Vancouver Island, but this system is not operative for tsunami detection.
The workshop attendees expressed concern on the use of the GPS technology for near field tsunami, but they indicated
the necessity of considering this option.
Temperature measurements are necessary to correct the pressure variations in the ocean. This is available on the existing
sensors of the Ocean Networks Canada.
38 What areas of research require new modelling approaches for the BC case? What are the technical challenges to developing these new approaches?
The group identified major research areas as landslides (aerial, subaerial, lake and submarine) and meteorological
tsunamis.
Meteorological tsunamis due to atmospheric conditions are potentially damaging and seem to be relatively common
on the coast of British Columbia. In the past ten years, 6 six meteorological tsunamis have been detected. They are
difficult to model since the measurements of the source are complicated, however, they can be detected with HF radar.
Measurements of the wind field can help when forecasting meteorological tsunamis. There are multiple technologies
to take these measurements, including AXYS technologies measurements of wind speeds 100m above surface or buoy
measurements ~3m above sea surface. These measurements need to be standardized for a distance over the surface and
benchmarking strategies need to be planned for this type of tsunami.
Submarine landslides are also recurrent events off the coast of British Columbia (e.g. Kitimat submarine landslide).
Mapping for unstable sediment bodies and geotechnical studies of the sediment can help to forecast these events.
Obtaining the geotechnical information for underwater areas is challenging.
Citizen science is an interesting option for the forecasting of these events. The use of barometers by citizens and schools
could aid on the need of measurements for this project. To date, weather measurements available from schools are not
common enough to have a reliable network. There are also some limitations on where the instrumentation could be
located, for example, barometer measurements in boats are probably affected by the aerodynamics of the ship rather
than the surrounding weather. The option of using high-resolution satellite live feeds should be also investigated for this
purpose. Wind variations would need to be measured in multiple locations and in particular in shallow water areas since
they are more related to meteorological tsunamis.
Hecate Straight, off the coast of British Columbia, is an area susceptible to meteorological tsunamis. This areacould
be monitored with CODAR in Sandspit and Vanilla Island and existing buoys from Environment Canada, and additional
instrumentation could also be used in the area.
What are the challenges to integrating these models into an early warning tsunami system (i.e. real time optimization of the model based on changing input from instruments)?
The major challenges for the integration of models from different people in the discussion group are the time necessary
to integrate all the data available and making this data accessible for inundation modelling. The data requirements,
discussed above indicate the necessity of accurate bathymetry and topography.
39 What type of ‘modelling studio’ could ONC provide for you to develop your models in an ideal world?
One of the major objectives of Ocean Networks Canada is to provide a modelling studio that could be used as a test-bed
for different tsunami models. We asked the experts attending our workshop to give a description of what would be the
assets of an ideal system for them.
There is a clear need of a graphical user interface that allows for the plugging in of models as well as allowing the user into
access points. The modelling desktop should be standardized and the user should be able to run the models. Since one
of the major objectives of the studio is to be able to compare models there needs to be a base grid to be able to compare
models.
Multiple questions arose on the best way to architect the studio. One point to be determined on the definition of the
studio is to decide if all users can log in and see the rest of the models or if a graphical interface should be used for the
comparison among models. Another parameter to be defined is if the user can replace models as an end user or only
view the ones uploaded into the system. These two parameters will need to be defined as the project advances. The user
should be able to define the number of CPUs to be used in the studio and the output data should be transferred back to
the users.
To guarantee the success of this studio, Ocean Networks Canada should start with a working group that would aid on the
first trials. ONC should also evaluate the resources that it will take to maintain the model studio.
40 Attendees Biographies
Ali Abdolali - University of Rome, Italy Ali obtained his bachelor degree in Civil Engineering and Master of Science in Hydraulic Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic). As part of his MSc project, he investigated the flow pattern near floating breakwaters. Later, he joined University of Roma Tre, Italy to do his Ph.D in coastal and maritime engineering. His field of research mainly focused on numerical modeling of weakly compressible fluid in the field of large scale tsunami modeling. Besides works on tsunami early warning systems (TEWS), he has been involved in a European project entitled MERMAID (Innovative Multi-purpose offshore platforms: planning, design and operation) working on numerical modeling of WECs i.e. Venice Gates and Oysters.
Peter S. Anderson - Simon Fraser University, Canada Peter Anderson is Director of the Telematics Research Lab and Associate Professor of Communication at Simon Fraser University. He has an international background in research and teaching in the fields of telecommunications, media, information systems and communication policy. During the past twenty-five years he has participated in the design and implementation of electronic communication and information systems for disaster management in collaboration with the United Nations, NATO, scientific, government and non-government disaster management organizations and representatives and is frequently called upon to assist during emergency and disaster events. He is currently collaborating with Canadian federal, provincial and territorial agencies, local authorities and responders on new methods for improving intra and interagency communications for mission critical operations, public warning and situational awareness. In 2013, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest Preparedness Society Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his contributions.
Jörn Behrens - University of Hamburg, Germany Educated as an applied mathematician with PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) from Bremen University and Habilitation from Technische Universität München, Munich, Jörn develops numerical methods for atmospheric and oceanic simulation. In 2006 following the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman Tsunami, he became head of the tsunami modeling group at Alfred Wegener Institute, Bremerhaven, and developed the simulation component of the German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS). After delivering the system, he accepted a professorship for numerical methods in geosciences at the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN) of University of Hamburg in 2009. He coordinates the research project ASCETE (Advanced Simulation of Coupled Earthquake Tsunami Events), and serves as Co-Chair of UNESCO Intergovernmental Coordination Group for setting up a Tsunami Early Warning System for the Mediterranean, North-East Atlantic and Connected Seas (NEAMTWS) Working Group 1 (Hazard Assessment and Modeling).
41 Alison Bird - Natural Resources Canada Alison Bird began her work as earthquake seismologist in 1997 with the International Seismological Centre in England, returning to Vancouver Island in 2000 to work with Natural Resources Canada. Alison analyses western Canadian earthquakes and routinely responds in the wake significant events (giving over 500 interviews over the past decade). She lectures for part of a quarterly course in Light Urban Search and Rescue, and is involved in several outreach activities as part of her participation in the Public Safety Geoscience programme. Alison is passionate about seismic- resistant engineering, mitigation techniques for at-risk communities and encouraging awareness of earthquakes and their associated hazards.
Jan Buermans - ASL Environmental Sciences Inc., Canada Jan Buermans, PEng. has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Queens’ University. He has been working with ASL Environmental Sciences Inc. since 2002. He is responsible for business development for ASL’s Product Division. Jan also markets the WERA phased-array HF-radar system manufactured by Helzel Messtechnik, Kaltenkirchen, Germany in North America. The shore-based WERA provide reliable ocean current measurements with outstanding spatial and temporal resolution suitable for the detection of near-shore Tsunamis.
Josef Cherniawski - InsLtute of Ocean Sciences, Canada Josef Cherniawsky is a Research Scientist at the Institute of Ocean Sciences, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Sidney, BC. Dr. Cherniawsky has about 30 years of experience in Physical Oceanography, reflected in his publicationshttps://www.researchgate.net/profile/Josef_ ( Cherniawsky/contributions?ev=prf_act). In the past 10-15 years he has been processing and inter- preting observations of sea level and tides from satellite altimeters, as well as working on numerical models of tsunami waves. His paper “Numerical Simulations of Tsunami Waves and Currents for Southern Vancouver Island from a Cascadia Megathrust Earthquake” (Pure Appl. Geophys. 2007) was the first attempt to produce detailed models of tsunami waves at several locations on the south coast of British Columbia that may be generated after a future megathrust (Mw=9) earthquake.
Tom Dakin - Ocean Networks Canada Tom started in physics and physical oceanography in 1981. He spent 12 years in the Military as both a Maritime Engineer and Aerospace Engineer with a focus on underwater acoustics. He spent 17 years at AML Oceanographic as the R&D manager.. He is best known for the time of flight sound speed sensor which is the industry standard in hydrographic surveying. Other designs include geothermal heat flux, conductivity, pressure, temperature, speed log, underwater mass spectrometer, oil spill detector buoy, XSV, boric acid concentration, diver ascent rate meter and a VLF hydrophone calibration system. Tom is now the Sensor Technologies Development Officer at Ocean Networks Canada, providing test, engineering and marketing support to the ocean instrumentation manufacturing industry to promote industry growth.
42 Richard Dewey - Ocean Networks Canada Richard is the Ocean Networks Canada Associate Director, Science. Richard is responsible for coordinating and assisting all scientists and researchers using the observatories, from planning to publication. He works with the Staff Scientists to support the science community. He has a B. Sc. in Physics from UVic and a Ph.D. in Oceanography from UBC. His research interests are coastal flows, mixing, turbulence, waves, and tides. He has conducted research throughout the Pacific from Japan to California, and along the B.C., Alaskan, and Arctic coasts. He has used a variety of profilers and ROVs, and deployed more than 150 moorings on over 100 oceanographic expeditions. He is author of the Mooring Design and Dynamics MATLAB package, and specializes
in time series analysis.
Herb Dragert - Natural Resources Canada Herb Dragert is an emeritus research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada and also holds a visiting professor position with the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria. His principal area of research has been the study of crustal deformation on the west coast of Canada using geodetic techniques such as leveling, precise gravity, laser-ranging trilat- eration, and GPS. Under his direction, the Geological Survey of Canada established the Western Canada Deformation Array, the first continuous GPS network in Canada for the express purpose of monitoring crustal motions. Data from this network led to the discovery of slow earthquakes and “Episodic Tremor and Slip” in the Cascadia Subduction Zone. He served on the UNAVCO Board of Directors from 2003–2006 and he was the Canadian Geophysical Union’s J. Tuzo Wilson medalist for 2007. He was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2013. Dr. Dragert received his B.Sc. in mathematics and physics from the University of Toronto and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in geophysics from the University of British Columbia.
Marie Eblé - NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, USA Marie Eblé graduated from Texas A&M University in 1984 with a MS in Physical Oceanography. She was employed for two years with the consulting firms of Northern Technical Services and Engineering Hydraulics, Inc. While in consulting, Marie was responsible for modeling and current studies in support of project awards including Sewage Outfall siting for the cities of Seattle and Tacoma and the U.S. Navy Homeport establishment in Everett, Washington. She became proficient in the use of the Delft hydraulics ‘Hydro Delft’ and the NOAA ‘On Scene Spill’ models and developed time series processing and analysis capabilities used for a varied number of contract projects. In 1986, Marie began her career with the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington. She has been involved with development, testing, and deployment of bottom pressure technology for observing tsunamis in the deep-ocean. Marie remains engaged in tsunami research with applicability to operational forecasting.
43 Isaac Fine - Institute of Ocean Sciences, Canada Isaac Fine (Isaak Fain) is a contractor at the Institute of Ocean Sciences, DFO Canada, Sidney, BC, since 2004. He is originally from Russia, where he coursed his bachelor in the Byelorussian State University, Minsk, USSR. In 1985 he finished his PhD in Geophysics. He worked in the Tsunami department of Institute of Marine Geology and Geophysics, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia, from 1976 to1989, and on the Heat and Mass Transfer Institute, Minsk, Belarus afterwards until 2004. His main interests include the development of 2D finite-difference and finite-elements numerical models for studying tsunamis, submarine landslides, and meteotsunamis. He works on data processing, 3D ocean modelling.
David Fissel - ASL Environmental Sciences Inc., Canada After completing an M.Sc. in physical oceanography at the University of British Columbia in 1975, David worked as a research oceanographer at the Institute of Ocean Sciences of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) in Sidney B.C. In 1977, he co-founded ASL Environmental Sciences Inc. (originally Arctic Sciences Ltd.), and has held a number of senior positions in the company. David Fissel has managed hundreds of oceanographic projects, involving studies of ocean currents, waves, and sea-ice in various parts of all three oceans bordering Canada as well as overseas projects. Most of these projects involved input to the design of offshore oil and gas facilities, port development, or environmental assessment and monitoring for coastal and deepwater developments. David has served on the many Boards and advisory committees including Ocean Networks Canada at the University of Victoria; and the Marine Environmental and Observation Prediction and Response (MEOPAR) National Centre of Excellence (NCE) at Dalhousie University.
Jannette Frandsen - InsLtut NaLonal de la Recherche Scientifique, Canada Jannette Frandsen joined the Institute National de la Recherche Scientifique (Quebec, Canada) in 2013, as professor and chairholder of the research chair in coastal and river engineering. Her research interests are in the areas of fluid dynamics, nearshore hydrodynamics, natural hazards, fluid-structure interactions and vibrations. Part of her responsibilities are activities in the large wave flume facility http://lhe.ete.inrs.ca( ) and to establish a coastal science program. She received her B.Sc. from the Technical University of Denmark, M.Sc. from Imperial College London and the doctorate at Cambridge, engineering science (aeroelasticity) in 2000. She was appointed a Departmental Lecturership at Oxford and concurrently held a Fellowship at Oriel College (1999). From 1999-2008, she has taught and undertaken research in U.K., USA and Australia. Underpinning her academic experience, she spent several years working in industry, where she undertook analysis and design of fixed and floating offshore platforms, bridges, harbors, offshore wind farms and wave energy devices.
44 Ken Halcro - Canadian Hydrographic Service, Pacific Region, Fisheries and Oceans Canada Ken joined the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS), Fisheries and Oceans Canada in 1980 as a hydrographic surveyor and graduated that same year from BCIT with Survey diploma. He received Canada Land Surveyor commission in 1988 and graduated from UVic with a BSc in Computer Science in 2000. Presently managing the data acquisition division of CHS Pacific, with which the running and monitoring of the Canadian Tsunami Warning system falls under.
Jeffrey C. Harris - University Paris-Est, France Jeffrey Harris is a researcher at Ecole des Ponts (ENPC) with the Saint-Venant Hydraulics Lab (a joint research lab between EDF R&D, CEREMA, and ENPC). His primary research interests are ocean wave modeling and high performance computing. Previously he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Rhode Island conducting tsunami hazard simulations that were a part of the east coast component of the US National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program (NTHMP). He presently is working on the development of a numerical wave tank for the modeling of offshore structures such as wave energy converters, as well as contributing to otherwave modeling projects, including tsunami modeling, with a particular focus on parallel processing. Dr. Harris received B.S. degrees in both mathematics and oceanography from the University of Washington, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in ocean engineering from the University of Rhode Island.
Martin Heesemann - Ocean Networks Canada Dr. Martin Heesemann joined NEPTUNE Canada as a Research Theme Integrator for Plate Tectonic Processes and Earthquake Dynamics in July 2010. In 2012 his job title was changed to Ocean Networks Canada Staff Scientist. Martin’s Ph.D. thesis at the University of Bremen (2008) focused on the acquisition, processing and interpretation of marine temperature and pressure data in the context of subduction zones. Most of his research is related to studying plate tectonic processes and earthquake dynamics using numerical models and time-series analyses of CORK borehole observatory, bottom pressure recorder, and seismometer data.
45 Joe Henton - Natural Resources Canada Joseph Henton is the leader of Natural Resources Canada’s “Plate Boundary Earthquake Geohazards” activity and a Research Scientist with NRCan’s Canadian Geodetic Survey. Through the application of satellite-based geodesy and absolute gravimetry, he investigates the time- evolution of national and regional spatial reference frames and gravity datums as well as the processes driving the observed change. In particular his research interests include crustal deformation studies varying from broad-scale glacio-isostatic adjustment to regional earthquake hazard studies at both active margins and continental interiors to local monitoring of surficial doming near a CO2 sequestration injection site. His work investigates processes that operate on time scales from long-term secular deformation, to transient geodetic signals that have durations of several weeks (such as Episodic Tremor and Slip), and to “GPS seismology” studying surface coseismic displacements and surface waveforms.
Maia Hoeberechts - Ocean Networks Canada Dr. Maia Hoeberechts is the Associate Director of User Services at Ocean Networks Canada (ONC), based at the University of Victoria. She manages the Data, Communications and Learning teams, the groups responsible for creating products and services which meet the needs of the scientific and broader user community of ONC. Maia joined ONC in 2010 as the Staff Scientist for Computer Science and Engineering, a role which she held for three years before assuming her current position in October, 2013. She continues her research as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Victoria focusing on interdisciplinary connections between ocean science and computer science, principally in the areas of computer vision, automated event detection and data visualization. Maia holds a PhD in Computer Science in the area of computability theory and a BSc in Philosophy and Computer Science from Western University.
Tania L. Insua - Ocean Networks Canada Tania is the Ocean Analytics Program Manager at Ocean Networks Canada. She obtained her bachelors degree in Marine Sciences and her Diploma of Advanced Studies in Marine Biology and Aquaculture from University of Vigo. After several years working in the biological sciences she became interested in engineering and modeling. She obtained MS and PhD degrees in Ocean Engineering from the University of Rhode Island with research focusing on applying models of sediment physical properties to past and present climate change. She has been an active participant of several Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, sailing as a physical properties specialist or ocean engineer.
46 Christian Janssen - Hamburg University of Technology, Germany Christian F. Janßen is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Institute for Fluid Dynamics and Ship Theory, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH). He studied Civil Engineering and Computational Sciences in Engineering (CSE) in Braunschweig, Germany. In 2010, he received his PhD from Braunschweig University of Technology for his dissertation on kinetic approaches for the simulation of non-linear free surface flow problems in civil and environmental engineering. During the subsequent postdoc stay at University of Rhode Island, Dr. Janßen worked on advanced Lattice Boltzmann multiphase models and efficient implementations of shallow water models on graphics processing units for the simulation of long wave propagation and Tsunami events. In 2012, he joined the Institute for Fluid Dynamics and Ship Theory in Hamburg, where he is responsible for the development of the efficient lattice Boltzmann code elbe. The code aims at interactively monitored nonlinear free surface flow simulations in real-time and has already been successfully applied to wave impact and wave-structure interaction problems in complex three-dimensional topologies.
Kim Juniper - Ocean Networks Canada Dr. Juniper has been a Professor in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences and the Department of Biology at the University of Victoria, and holder of the BC Leadership Chair in Ocean Ecosystems and Global Change since 2006. He came to UVic from the Université du Québec à Montréal where he was Professor of Biology and Director of the GEOTOP Research Centre. He received his BSc from the University of Alberta (1976) and a PhD from Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand (1982). The primary focus of his research has been the biogeochemistry and ecology of submarine hydrothermal systems. His interdisciplinary publications on deep-sea vents encompass the fields of microbial ecology, biomineralization and benthic ecology. Other research areas have included the microbial ecology of deep-sea sediments, and the seasonal dynamics of arctic sea-ice microbial communities. Juniper previously served the NEPTUNE Canada project as Co-Chief Scientist in 2004-2006, and was President of the Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility from 2001 to 2011.
James T. Kirby - University of Delaware, USA Jim Kirby received his B. S. and M. S. from Brown University in 1975 and 1976, and his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware in 1983. He has served on the Faculty of SUNY Stony Brook, the University of Florida and the University of Delaware (1989-present). Recent research has focussed on the mechanics of breaking wave crests, rip current dynamics, wave-current interaction in strongly sheared flows, tsunami generation, propagation and inundation, and morphology of tidal marshes. He has co-authored a number of public domain software packages including REF/ DIF, FUNWAVE, NearCoM and NHWAVE, and is author of 99 refereed journal articles. He received the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (1992) and the Moffatt-Nichol Port and Coastal Engineering Award (2011) from ASCE. He has served as Editor or Editor in Chief for two ASCE and one AGU journal. He presently serves on the Coordinating Committee for the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program.
47 Lucinda Leonard - University of Victoria Lucinda Leonard is an Assistant Professor in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria. She holds a Bachelors degree in Geology from Trinity College Dublin, and a PhD in Geophysics from the University of Victoria. Lucinda works closely with scientists from Natural Resources Canada at the Pacific Geoscience Centre, where she previously held a Visiting Fellowship postdoctoral position. Her research interests include the study of large earthquakes and tsunamis, including both recent and pre-historic events, as well as assessment of the seismic and tsunami hazard related to future events. Recent work includes a preliminary tsunami hazard assessment of Canada, and field studies following the 2012 Haida Gwaii tsunami.
Gwyn Lintern - Natural Resources Canada Dr. Lintern researches sediment hazards in the marine environment. He has worked on issues on all three coasts, including submarine slope stability, dredging and port expansion, coastal erosion, and storm surge modelling. The sediment issues Dr. Lintern studies often arise in infrastructure and development projects. Sediment transport can cause damaging scour around structures (e.g. pipelines, undersea cables), coastline erosion, and infill of navigation channels. He also advises on activities such as dredging and trawling which can have damaging siltation effects.
Hannan Lohrasbipeydeh - Univeristy of Victoria Mr. Hannan Lohrasbi is a PhD candidate in electrical engineering at University of Victoria. His major research interest is focused on the underwater acoustic signal processing specially source detection and localization. He has collaboration with Ocean Network Canada since 2012. He was a winner of IEEE Scholarship in 2012 and 2013. Due to his publication in underwater marine mammal acoustics, he was appointed as chair of bio acoustic section in IEEE Ocean Conf. 2013 at San Diego. His current research is focused on the underwater landslide detection and localization which is considered as one of the trigger of the tsunami.
Roe Markham - Ocean Networks Canada Roe is a Strategic Planning Officer for the Ocean Networks Canada Innovation Centre. He is a management consultant with over 30 years of experience in program development and management, business process design, and information systems. Roe’s background is in strategic planning, building and implementing $100M programs in multi-stakeholder environments, and executive sales and marketing. Industry subject areas include: IT services, public sector, defense, airlines, banking, insurance, brokerage, manufacturing, ERP systems, HR systems, warehousing and logistics systems, procurement, printing and distribution systems.
48 Scott McLean - Ocean Networks Canada Scott, a professional electrical engineer, brings over 21 years of ocean technology development experience to ONC from Halifax, where he worked for eight years as chief technology officer and vice-president of research and development at a high-tech oceanographic company. Scott’s areas of expertise include sensor development, observing system design and sensor integration into observing systems. From his experience in product development from concept through to creation, Scott has the proven ability to turn partnerships and technology transfers from Canadian and international groups into successful commercial products. Scott is the Ocean Networks Canada Innovation Centre Director, and also the Business Development Officer for Ocean Observing Technology.
Steven Mihaly - Ocean Networks Canada As a staff scientist for Ocean Networks Canada (ONC), Dr. Steven Mihaly focuses on supporting interdisciplinary research within the theme “Ocean/Climate Dynamics and their Effects on Marine Biota”. Steve holds Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) from Dalhousie University and a PhD in Physical Oceanography from the University of British Columbia. He comes to ONC from Fisheries and Oceans Canada where he was a research associate specializing in observational science using moorings and ship-borne hydro water surveys in the Salish Sea, the west coast of Vancouver Island and at rough topography associated with the Juan de Fuca Ridge.
Teron Moore - Emergency Management BC Teron Moore is the Provincial Seismic Specialist for Emergency Management BC. His portfolio includes provincial leadership for earthquake, tsunami, and volcano hazards with an emphasis on preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery planning. Among other roles, Teron serves as the Vice President of the Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup, is an executive member of the BC Seismic Safety Council and co-leads the BC ShakeOut organizing committee. He holds a Master’s degree in Disaster and Emergency Management from Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC with a research focus on the evaluation of international earthquake and tsunami projects. He also holds a professional designation in Project Management from the Project Management Institute.
49 Dmitry Nicolsky - University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA Dmitry Nicolsky his B. S. from St. Petersburg State University, Russia in 2000, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2003 and 2007. Dmitry’s recent research is focused on development of the statewide tsunami inundation maps for emergency planning in Alaska. Dmitry is the State Science Representative on the Coordinating Committee of the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program (NTHMP), a partnership between federal and state govern- mental agencies designed to reduce the impact of tsunamis through hazard assessment, warning guidance, and mitigation.
Benoit Pirenne - Ocean Networks Canada Benoît Pirenne is Associate Director, Digital Infrastructure, at Ocean Networks Canada ONC). He joined NEPTUNE Canada in October 2004 after having spent about 18 years at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), a leading organization for astronomical research where he assumed a number of scientific and technical (IT) positions in the area of data management. Now at the University of Victoria, Benoît heads the Digital Infrastructure (DI) department that builds and operates “Oceans 2.0”, the data management and archiving system for ONC. Oceans 2.0 comprises the software and systems infrastructure necessary to link world-wide user communities to the NEPTUNE Canada and VENUS observatories. Benoît holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Namur, Belgium (1986) and graduated in Computer Science from the Institut St-Laurent in Liège, Belgium in 1983.
Alexander B. Rabinovich -- Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russia Dr. Alexander B. Rabinovich has more than 40 years of research experience in ocean dynamics, coastal engineering, tides and currents, seiches, sea level changes and time series analysis. The main focus of his research is tsunamis and is a world-leading specialist in this field. He received his B.Sc. degree from the Moscow State University (Russia), his Ph.D. from the Marine Hydrophysical Institute (Sevastopol) and his D.Sc. from the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology (Moscow). For 20 years he worked in the Russian Far East, focusing his research mainly on tsunamis, tides, harbour oscillations and storm surges. For the last 20 years he has been working at the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology in Moscow and also at a number of foreign research institutes and uni- versities; he has recently immigrated to Canada. He has published more than 180 papers in Russian and international journals on various aspects of tsunamis, tides and ocean dynamics. He has held academic positions at: Universitat de les Illes Balears (Spain), Universita di Genova (Italy), Seoul National University (Korea), University of Alaska at Fairbanks (USA) and the University of Tokyo (Japan). He has participated in a variety of applied projects, including tsunami hazard estimation, sediment transport, pollutant dispersal, tidal analysis and storm surges.
50 Volker Roeber - Tohoku University, Japan Dr. Volker Roeber is an Assistant Professor at the Laboratory of Technology for Global Disaster Risk at the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS) at Tohoku University, Japan. Originally from the Lake Constance region in southern Germany, Volker obtained a Masters degree in Coastal Geosciences & Engineering from Kiel University in 2001. He then spent two years in Brazil where he worked for the oil and gas company Petrobrás. Volker then joined the University of Hawaii where he graduated with a PhD in Ocean & Resources Engineering in 2010. His PhD and subsequent postdoctoral research focused on numerical computations and laboratory experiments with respect to nearshore wave processes. At IRIDeS, he is continuing his research on numerical modeling and disaster mitigation of storm waves and tsunamis.
Garry Rogers - Natural Resources Canada Dr. Garry Rogers is a Senior Research Scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada specializing in earthquake and tsunami studies. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria where he is Principle Investigator for the seismograph network attached to Ocean Networks Canada’s offshore NEPTUNE cabled observatory. For the past decade he has been representing Canada on the UNESCO/IOC Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Pacific Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System. He also currently is a member of the National Research Council’s Standing Committee for Earthquake Design, which is responsible for earthquake provisions in the National Building Code of Canada. In recent years he has served on multi-year scientific advisory committees to the Earthquake Program of the US Geological Survey, the Southern California Earthquake Center and NEPTUNE Canada.
Andreas Rosenberger - Ocean Networks Canada Andreas Rosenberger graduated from University of Hamburg, Germany, in Geophysics, applied Mathematics and Physics in 1988. He earned a doctoral degree from Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and University of Bremen (Germany) in 1991. Before moving to Canada in 1999 he spent six years teaching as an assistant professor, department of marine technology, at the University of Bremen. In Canada, he initially worked as an R&D scientist for Quester Tangent Corp. on marine sonar systems and consulted with the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) on the design of a new type of real-time reporting seismograph system. In 2001 Dr. Rosenberger joined the GSC where his research focused on problems in real-time seismology. He designed and implemented the software and IT infrastructure of the GSC’s Internet accelerome- ter network and collaborated with the British Columbia Ministry of transportation and Infrastructure for the British Columbia Smart Infrastructure Monitoring System (BCSIMS) project. On leave from the GSC in 2006/2007, Dr. Rosenberger worked for the German Marine Research Consortium (KDM) as coordinator, marine instrumentation, for the German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) project. Since January 2014 he is consulting Ocean Networks Canada on the WARN project.
51 Michael Schmidt - Natural Resources Canada Mike Schmidt, P.Eng. was until recently head of the Canadian Crustal Deformation Service at the Geological Survey of Canada’s Pacific Geoscience Centre. He has been involved with the application of GPS to crustal deformation, earthquake research and tsunami early warning for over 20 years, developing the Western Canada Deformation Array a network of continuously Operating GNSS Reference Stations in western Canada. He has worked with GPS since 1980, developing early algorithms for the analysis of GPS data, managed several major research projects and field operations in western Canada and the Arctic. Along with colleagues at the GSC he co-developed one of the first prototype GPS augmentations to tsunami early warning systems. He is currently a consultant based in North Saanich, B.C.
Elena Tolkova - NorthWest Research Associates, USA Elena I. Tolkova graduated from Nizhny Novgorod State University (NNSU) in Russia in 1985 and stayed with the University for 15 years after the graduation, as a research scientist and later as a professor of General Physics Department, specializing in optical interferometry, image processing, and time-series analysis. She received Kandidat Nauk (Ph.D equivalent in Russia) degree in 1994 in the NNSU. In 2000, she moved to the USA with her husband, son, and daughter. Elena attained experience with tsunami modeling and forecasting while working in the University of Washington for NOAA’s Center for Tsunami Research in 2005-2013. Her major research interests are tsunami intrusion into rivers, tsunami dynamics in natural resonators, forecasting techniques, and computer code development for tsunami simulations. Since 2013, she pursues these areas with NorthWest Research Associates, Inc.
Tummala Srinivasa Kumar - Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, India Dr. Srinivasa Kumar Tummala is a Scientist heading Advisory Service & Satellite Oceanography Group at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) and also in-charge of the Indian National Tsunami Early Warning Centre. As Project manager, he contributed immensely to the establish- ment of state-of-the-art facilities at the Indian Tsunami Early Warning Centre. Recognizing his contribu- tions for establishing the Indian tsunami early warning centre, the Indian Ministry of Mines conferred him with the prestigious “National Geoscience Award” in 2010. He also contributed to the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (ICG/IOTWS) in various capacities. Currently he is a Vice Chair the ICG/ IOTWS and Chairman of TOWS Working Group’s Inter-ICG Task Team on Tsunami Watch Operations. He holds a Master’s degree in Marine Biology & Oceanography and Ph.D. in Marine Science. He authored several publications in interna- tional peer reviewed journals.
52 Carlos E. Ventura - University of British Columbia, Canada Carlos Ventura is a Civil Engineer with specializations in structural dynamics and earthquake engineering. He has been a faculty member of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada since 1992. He is currently the Director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Facility (EERF) at UBC, and is the author of more than 400 papers and reports on earthquake engineering, structural dynamics and modal testing. He is a member of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and Fellow of Engineers Canada, also a member of several national and international professional societies, advisory committees and several building and bridge code committees. Dr. Ventura has conducted research about earthquakes for more than thirty years. His current research includes the development and implementation of performance-based design methods for seismic retrofit of low rise school buildings, novel techniques for regional estimation of damage to structures during earthquakes, and on structural health monitoring of building, bridges and dams. His consulting practice includes projects with companies and government institutions in North America, Central America, South America, Asia and Europe.
Kelin Wang - Natural Resources Canada Kelin Wang is a senior Research Scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada. Most of his current research is on geodynamics of subduction zones and related earthquake and tsunami hazards, but he has also worked on a range of other topics regarding the thermal, mechanical, and hydro- geological processes of Earth’s lithosphere. He obtained his B.Sc. degree at the Peking University in 1982 and Ph.D. at the University of Western Ontario in 1989. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria and an Honorary or Guest Professor for several other scientific institutions. He was or still is on the Editorial Boards of a number of scientific journals such as Journal of Geophysical Research, Geology, Journal of Geodynamics, Science in China (Earth Science), and Earthquake Science.
Tim Webb - ESSA Technologies, Canada Tim is an analyst, simulation modeler, and emergency management professional with over 33 years of experience designing, developing, and deploying decision support tools. His work has focussed on providing mission critical information to managers and planners in the fields of emergency preparedness and response and natural resources management. Tim has directed projects around the world and been the technical visionary on a number of major systems projects in North America, the Middle East and Australia. His recent work has focussed on the development of tools for natural hazard damage forecasting and information management systems to fuse data from many different sources into actionable intelligence for emergency planners and responders. Tim is a resident of Tofino and is active in the volunteer community on the west coast of Vancouver Island; he has been a SAR volunteer for over fifteen years serving in the role of SAR Manager and president of the Westcoast Inland Search and Rescue Society. Tim served as deputy Emergency Coordinator for Tofino for a number of years and as director and co-chair on the board of the Clayoquot Biosphere Trust for six years.
53 Stuart Weinstein - NOAA/NWS Pacific tsunami Warning Center, USA Stuart Weinstein is the Assistant Director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) located in Ewa Beach Hawaii, USA. He has held this position since 2005, and has been with the PTWC since 1998. He oversees the day-to-day operations of the warning center and conducts tsunami training with the International Tsunami Information Center based in Hawaii. Stuart received his Ph.D. in 1991 from the Johns Hopkins University (Maryland) for his dissertation on thermal convection in planetary mantles. He continued in this area of research with a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Earth Sciences grant at the University of Michigan in 1991 and at the University of Hawaii as the SOEST Young Investigator in 1993. Stuart worked for Bloomberg L.P. New York, from 1996-1997 writing financial analysis software. New York reminded Stuart how much he appreciated Hawaii’s climate. This prompted Stuart’s move back to Hawaii in 1998.
Onat Yazir - University of Victoria, Canada Dr. Yagiz Onat Yazir completed his Ph. D. in Computer Science in 2011, and is currently a post- doctoral fellow at the University of Victoria under the supervision of Dr. Yvonne Coady. His research mainly focuses on autonomous control of various scales of distributed infrastructures with particular emphasis on distributed computing, discrete event simulation platforms, resource allocation management in the cloud, adaptive routing in mobile ad hoc networks, and multiple criteria decision analysis. Throughout his Ph. D. and his post-doctoral fellowship, Dr. Yazir has participated in a number of scientific projects that involve both purely academic work and indus- try-academia research collaborations.
54 Ocean Networks Canada is developed through: A consortium of 12 Canadian universities, government labs and international institutions.
Major Funders: BC Knowledge Development Fund
British Columbia Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development
Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)
Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network (CANARIE)
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE)
University of Victoria (UVic)
In Partnership with: Federal and provincial departments and agencies
US and international academic institutions
Canadian, US and international companies
Contact:
Ocean Networks Canada Technology Enterprise Facility (TEF) University of Victoria PO Box 1700 STN CSC 2300 McKenzie Avenue Victoria, BC Canada V8W 2Y2 250.472.5400 | [email protected] | www.oceannetworks.ca
@Ocean_Networks | /OceanNetworksCanada | oceannetworks.ca
55 AN INITIATIVE OF