Laura Hughes
Contact
Email: laura.hughes@vuw.ac.nz
Office: CO524
Qualifications
BSc in Geology and Statistics, Victoria University of Wellington (2018)
MSc in Geophysics, Victoria University of Wellington (2020)
PhD Candidate in Geophysics
Research Interests
- Natural Hazard analysis.
- Computer modelling of natural hazards, specifically tsunamis.
- Statistical modelling of natural hazards, specifically tsunamis.
PhD thesis
Title
Using physics-based synthetic earthquakes to model tsunamis and improve tsunami hazard assessment methodologies in New Zealand.
Supervisors
- Dr William Power (GNS Science)
- Dr Emily Lane (NIWA)
Project objectives and description
This project aims to develop a workflow for using a newly created physic-based synthetic earthquake catalogue for Aotearoa/New Zealand to undertake not only a probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment to the coast, but a probabilistic tsunami inundation assessment. Earthquake simulators produce long time scale (100,000-1,000,000-year) earthquake catalogues that contain a large number (>5000) of possible earthquake scenarios, that can be used to compliment palaeoearthquake and digital earthquake records, when assessing the tsunami hazard. While physics-based synthetic earthquake catalogues have been used previously for seismic hazard assessment, this is the first time globally that they have been used to conduct a tsunami hazard assessment. Due to the large number of earthquakes in the catalogues, they contain a wide range of tsunamigenic events, which is crucial to capture the complexity in the tsunamis produced from local earthquakes. Current work is focused on building a work flow for not only using these catalogues for tsunami hazard assessment, but also reducing the number simulations required to obtain a reliable hazard assessment. Future work will look into how we can further extend our use of the catalogues by creating a database of inundation simulations for Te Matau-a-Māui/Hawke’s Bay and developing techniques for how the catalogues can be used for tsunami inundation assessments.
Publications
Hughes, L., Chamberlain, C. J., Townend, J., & Thomas, A. M. (2021). A repeating earthquake catalog from 2003 to 2020 for the Raukumara Peninsula, northern Hikurangi subduction margin, New Zealand. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 22(5), e2021GC009670.