Report on the M6.5 - 129km ESE of Namie, Japan earthquake of July 12, 2014
Laboratory of Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics for Disaster Management,
International Research Institute of Disaster Science, Tohoku University

Introduction

The July 12, 2014 (M6.5 at USGS - M6.8 at JMA) earthquake offshore of Japan coast, at approximately 129km ESE of Namie occurred as a result of shallow normal faulting on or near the plate boundary interface between the Pacific and North American plates. This earthquake occurred at 04:22 JST time and generated a tsunami of approximately 20cm observed in the areas near the epicenter in Japan. No damages have been reported to the time of this report. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) issued a tsunami advisory at 04:26 JST related to this event.

Location of the event

Click image to enlarge

News related to the event

CNN
Reuters
NHK (English) (Japanese)

Resources

• M6.5 - 129km ESE of Namie, Japan (USGS Earthquake Hazards Program)

Tsunami source model

The fault mechanism is based on USGS moment tensor solutions (USGS) of National Research Institute Center (NEIC) of United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Case 1

Fault Length/Width : 25.0 km / 12.5 km

Dislocation : 0.8 m

Fault mechanism : (Strike, Dip, Slip)=(20, 67, -95)

Depth : 1.0 km

Case 2

Fault Length/Width : 25.0 km / 12.5 km

Dislocation : 0.8 m

Fault mechanism : (Strike, Dip, Slip)=(211, 24, -85)

Depth : 1.0 km

Tsunami source model (Seismic deformation)

Tsunami Inundation Model

Numerical model

Tsunami numerical modeling is performed by using TUNAMI-N2 code (non-linear shalllow water theory) with a 405 m bathymetry and topography grid size.

Governing Equation : Non-linear Shallow Water Equations

Numerical Scheme : Leap-frog Finite Difference Method (TUNAMI code of Tohoku University)

Spatial Grid Size : 405 m

Model result

Maximum tsunami height

Tsunami animation

Timeseries (Modeled tsunami waveforms)

Exposed population and damage estimation