Reply to comment on "Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard in the Northeast Atlantic From Near- and Far-Field Tectonic Sources'' by Fonseca (Pure and Applied Geophysics, 2016)

• Published in: Pure and Applied Geophysics
• Main Authors: Omira, Rachid, Matias, Luis, Baptista, Maria Ana Carvalho Viana
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Verlag 2017
• Subjects: Plate boundary; GLORIA fault; Earthquake; Lithosphere; Seismicity; Magnitude; Motion; Sea; Indian; Northeast Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.21/7000; https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-017-1470-9

The recent events of the Indian Ocean 2004 and the Tohoku-Oki 2011 have brought to the fore the hazardous nature of the tsunami phenomenon. Consequently, understanding and quantifying the tsunami hazard have gained a significant interest from researchers worldwide. Traditionally, deterministic approach, based on the maximum credible event or the worst-case scenario, has been used to assess the tsunami hazard. However, the absence of a single comprehensive way to define this scenario makes the usefulness of the deterministic method limited (Geist and Lynett 2014). Probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment (PTHA), on the other hand, takes into consideration the contribution of multiple tsunamigenic sources to elaborate tsunami hazard maps. PTHA is now widely used in different tsunami-prone areas of the globe (Annaka et al. 2007; Thio et al. 2007; Sørensen et al. 2012; Yadav et al. 2013; Roshan et al. 2016). In the NE Atlantic, many efforts have been conducted in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 to assess hazard posed by tsunamis. They mainly addressed the tsunami hazard through the deterministic approach with a particular focus on the coastal impact from the 1755-like event (Omira et al. 2010, 2011, 2013; Baptista et al. 2011). Alternatively, Omira et al. (2015) and, more recently, Omira et al. (2016) introduced the probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment in the NE Atlantic from sources of tectonic origin. We welcome the comment by Fonseca (2016) as it gives us the opportunity to better discuss the progress in the PTHA in the NE Atlantic. In his comment, Fonseca (2016) focuses on three main points: (1) the communication of the hazard; (2) the conservatism in the hazard analysis; (3) the uncertainty treatment. The reply to the comments raised by Fonseca (2016) will be addressed in the following sections. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion