Laura Hughes

Portrait of Laura smiling at the camera.

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

- Prof Martha Savage

- Prof Richard Arnold

- 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.