Multi-index method using offshore ocean-bottom pressure data for real-time tsunami forecast

We developed a real-time tsunami forecast method using only pressure data collected from the bottom of the ocean via a dense offshore observation network. The key feature of the method is rapid matching between offshore tsunami observations and pre-calculated offshore tsunami spatial distributions. We first calculate the tsunami waveforms at offshore stations and the maximum coastal tsunami heights from any possible tsunami source model and register them in the proposed Tsunami Scenario Bank ( TSB). When a tsunami occurs, we use multiple indices to quickly select dozens of appropriate tsunami scenarios that can explain the offshore observations. At the same time, the maximum coastal tsunami heights coupled with the selected tsunami scenarios are forecast. We apply three indices, which are the correlation coefficient and two kinds of variance reductions normalized by the L2-norm of either the observation or calculation, to match the observed spatial distributions with the pre-calculated spatial distributions in the TSB. We examine the ability of our method to select appropriate tsunami scenarios by conducting synthetic tests using a scenario based on "pseudo-observations." For these tests, we construct a tentative TSB, which contains tsunami waveforms at locations in the Seafloor Observation Network for Earthquakes and Tsunamis along the Japan Trench and maximum coastal tsunami heights, using about 2000 tsunami source models along the Japan Trench. Based on the test results, we confirm that the method can select appropriate tsunami scenarios within a certain precision by using the two kinds of variance reductions, which are sensitive to the tsunami size, and the correlation coefficient, which is sensitive to the tsunami source location. In this paper, we present the results and discuss the characteristics and behavior of the multi-index method. The addition of tsunami inundation components to the TSB is expected to enable the application of this method to real-time tsunami inundation forecasts in the near future.