Probabilistic tsunami forecasting for early warning

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25815-w
• Publication Date: 2021-09-28T10:03:06Z
• Authors: J. Selva; S. Lorito; M. Volpe; F. Romano; R. Tonini; P. Perfetti; F. Bernardi; M. Taroni; A. Scala; A. Babeyko; F. Løvholt; S. J. Gibbons; J. Macías; M. J. Castro; J. M. González-Vida; C. Sánchez-Linares; H. B. Bayraktar; R. Basili; F. E. Maesano; M. M. Tiberti; F. Mele; A. Piatanesi; A. Amato
• Keywords: Hindcast; Probabilistic Forecasting

Tsunami warning centres face the challenging task of rapidly forecasting tsunami threat immediately after an earthquake, when there is high uncertainty due to data deficiency. Here we introduce Probabilistic Forecasting (PTF) for early warning. PTF explicitly treats data- and forecast-uncertainties, enabling alert level definitions according any predefined conservatism, which connected average balance missed-vs-false-alarms. Impact forecasts resulting recommendations become progressively less uncertain as new available. report implementation near-source test it systematically by hindcasting great 2010 M8.8 Maule (Chile) well-studied 2003 M6.8 Zemmouri-Boumerdes (Algeria) tsunamis, well all Mediterranean earthquakes that triggered messages at Italian Warning Centre since its inception in 2015, demonstrating accuracy over a wide range magnitudes earthquake types.