Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Recent studies for the coast of British Columbia indicate that there is a significant probability of a large megathrust earthquake along the Cascadia subduction zone within the next 50 years. The next great earthquake and subsequent tsunami could cause a significant number of fatalities and result in major economic losses along the west coast of British Columbia (BC). A recent report to the Insurance Bureau of Canada estimates the economic impact of such an event on the coast of BC to be approximately ~ $75 Billion CDN. Another report from the Office of the Auditor General of BC in 2014 indicates ""...Emergency Management BC (EMBC) cannot demonstrate that it is adequately prepared to manage the effects of a catastrophic earthquake..."". Some of the major limitations for the preparedness for such an event come from the lack of reliable tsunami detection and time of arrival forecast systems for the area. In the event of far-field tsunamis (i.e. tsunamis arriving from distant locations in the Pacific Ocean), British Columbia receives alerts through the Alaska and Hawaii Tsunami Warning Centers operated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) in the United States based on the tsunami detection system that they operate. Unfortunately, the NOAA detection system is not designed for addressing the generation and propagation of near-field tsunamis that originate less than 1000 km offshore.We propose to advance the tsunami detection and warning systems for near-field tsunamis for the coast of BC. This project leverages the computational power of IBM's hardware, the academic knowledge at the University of Victoria and the ""big data"" collected by Ocean Networks Canada's observatories infrastructure in combination with other data sources to produce software and modeling developments tailored for the west coast of Canada. These first time developments for near-field tsunamis could be adapted in the future to other areas of interest putting Canada at the forefront of near-field tsunami science and being instrumental in saving lives.