Probabilistic forecasting of plausible debris flows using data and multiple models of the physics

Abstract

Hazard assessment of geophysical mass flows, such as landslides or pyroclastic flows, usually relies on the reconstruction of past flows that occurred in the region of interest using models of physics that have been successful in hindcasting. While physical models relate inputs and outputs of the dynamical system of the mass flow (Gilbert, 1991; Patra et al., 2018a) this relation is dependent on the choice of model and parameters which is usually difficult for future events.

Choices based on limited data using classical inversion is often misleading since it does not reflect all potential event characteristics and even in a probabilistic setting can be error-prone, due to incorrectly limited event space. In this work, we use a multi-model ensemble and a plausible region approach to provide a more prediction-oriented probabilistic framework for hazard analysis.