Potential of deep predictive coding networks for spatiotemporal tsunami wavefield prediction

Abstract

AbstractData assimilation is a powerful tool for directly forecasting tsunami wavefields from the waveforms recorded at dense observational stations like S-Net without the need to know the earthquake source parameters. However, this method requires a high computational load and a quick warning is essential when a tsunami threat is near. We propose a new approach based on a deep predictive coding network for forecasting spatiotemporal tsunami wavefields. Unlike the previous data assimilation method, which continuously computes the wavefield when observed data are available, we use only a short sequence from previously assimilated wavefields to forecast the future wavefield. Since the predictions are computed through matrix multiplication, the future wavefield can be estimated in seconds. We apply the proposed method to simple bathymetry and the 2011 Tohoku tsunami. The results show that our proposed method is very fast (1.6 s for 32 frames of prediction with 1-min interval) and comparable to the previous data assimilation. Therefore, the proposed method is promising for integration with data assimilation to reduce the computational cost.