REASSESSMENT OF TSUNAMI HAZARD IN THE CITY OF IQUIQUE, CHILE, AFTER THE PISAGUA EARTHQUAKE OF APRIL 2014 In the present contribution, we will reassess the tsunami hazard for the North of Chile taking into account the occurrence of the recent events, focusing on the potential tsunami impact that a worse case scenario could produce in the city of Iquique.

Cienfuegos, Rodrigo

NH13A-3727:

REASSESSMENT OF TSUNAMI HAZARD IN THE CITY OF IQUIQUE, CHILE, AFTER THE PISAGUA EARTHQUAKE OF APRIL 2014 In the present contribution, we will reassess the tsunami hazard for the North of Chile taking into account the occurrence of the recent events, focusing on the potential tsunami impact that a worse case scenario could produce in the city of Iquique.

Monday, 15 December 2014

Rodrigo Cienfuegos^1,2, Leandro Suarez^1,2, Rafael Aránguiz^1,3, Gabriel Gonzalez⁴, Juan F. González-Carrasco^1,5, Patricio Andres Catalan^1,6, juan Carlos Dominguez¹ and Takashi Tomita⁷, (1)CIGIDEN, Santiago, Chile, (2)Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile, (3)Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, Department of Civil Engineering, Concepción, Chile, (4)Organization Not Listed, Washington, DC, United States, (5)Universidad Católica del Norte, Department of Geological Sciences, Antofagasta, Chile, (6)Federico Santa María Technical University, Departamento de Obras Civiles, Valparaiso, Chile, (7)Port and Airport Research Institute, Kanagawa, Japan

Abstract:

On April 1^st2014 a 8.1 Mw Earthquake occurred at 23:46:50 UTC (20:46:50 local time) with its epicenter located off the coast of Pisagua, 68 km north of the city of Iquique (An et al., 2014).

The potential risk of earthquake and tsunami in this area was widely recognized by the scientific community (Chlieh et al., 2004). Nevertheless, the energy released by this earthquake and the associated slip distribution was much less than expected.

In the present contribution, we will reassess the tsunami hazard for the North of Chile taking into account the occurrence of the recent events, focusing on the potential impact that a worse case scenario could produce in the city of Iquique. For that purpose, an updated tsunami source will be derived using updated information on the seismic and co-seismic tectonic displacements that is available from historical, geological information, and the dense GPS and seismometer networks available in the North of Chile.

The updated tsunami source will be used to generate initial conditions for a tsunami and analyze the following aspects: i) large scale hydrodynamics, ii) arrival times, maximum flow depths, and inundation area, iii) potential impact on the port of Iquique, and more specifically on the container’s drift that the tsunami could produce. This analysis is essential to reassess tsunami hazard in Iquique, evaluate evacuation plans and mitigation options regarding the port operation. Tsunami propagation and inundation will be conducted using the STOC model (Tomita and Honda, 2010), and a high resolution Lidar topographic database.

References

An, C. et al. (2014). Tsunami source and its validation of the 2014 Iquique, Chile Earthquake, Geophys. Res. Lett., 41, doi:10.1002/2014GL060567.

Chlieh, et al. (2004). Crustal deformation and fault slip during the seismic cycle in the north Chile subduction zone, from GPS and INSAR observations, Geophys J. Int., 158(2), 695-711, 10.1111/j.1365-246X.2004.02326.x.

Tomita, T., & Honda, K. (2010). Practical model to estimate drift motion of vessels by tsunami with consideration of colliding with structures and stranding. Proceedings of the 32nd Conference on Coastal Engineering. ASCE.