BPPT to propose applying 'Seawatch' tsunami alert
Tony Hotland, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
As part of a region-wide tsunami early warning system to be discussed during a one-day summit here on Thursday, the government will suggest the use of the "Seawatch" system to alert residents of tidal waves.
The Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), which has been appointed by the government to offer suggestions during the summit, said Indonesia had previously operated such a system for other purposes, but operation stalled following the financial crisis in the late 1990s.
"With assistance from Norway, we started using the system in 1996 to observe ocean pollution and navigation safety. But we stopped operations in 2000 due to cash constraints," Tusy Adibroto, the deputy for information, energy, material and environmental technology with the agency, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
A Seawatch system uses buoys that are equipped with a variety of sensors that record oceanographic movements and changes. The buoys transmit data to satellites at designated times.
Tusy said such a system had been used by countries like India, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.
"As far as I remember, Vietnam uses it for tsunami alerts. However, the current buoys that we have must be upgraded by adding more kinds of sensors to enable them to detect tsunami. We must also increase the number of buoys to between 65 and 70 from our current number of 12," she said.
Tusy added that the Seawatch system must be complemented with seismographic data from other agencies to create a coordinated mitigation center for natural disasters like tsunami and large- scale earthquakes.
Thursday's summit was initiated by the Indonesian government after a massive 9.0-magnitude quake originating off the western coast of Sumatra caused a tsunami that leveled vast coastal areas on the country's northern tip last week, claiming tens of thousands of lives. Experts have claimed that the absence of a warning system contributed to the massive losses suffered by countries bordering the Indian Ocean. By contrast, countries in the Pacific Ocean have already set up regional warning systems.
A number of world leaders, including United Nations Secretary- General Kofi Annan, United States Secretary of State Colin Powell and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, have confirmed their attendance.
Tusy also said that besides cooperation with other countries, such a system would also require coordinated information links between areas to accelerate dissemination of data.
Chief scientist at Geoscience Australia, Phil McFadden, said a tsunami warning system could be built in the Indian Ocean area in just one year and cost about US$20 million.
He said a system for the Indian Ocean basin would include 30 seismographs to detect earthquakes. Ten tidal gauges and six special Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) buoys would also be needed determine whether an earthquake has generated a tsunami.
McFadden estimated that each DART buoy would cost about $250,000, plus annual maintenance costs of up to $50,000.
However, vastly improved communications links to coastal communities were essential to make the system work considering that the coastal villages that bore the brunt of last week's tidal waves lacked modern communication networks, even telephones.
"There's no point in spending all this money on fancy monitoring and analysis system unless we can make certain that the infrastructure for the broadcast system is there," McFadden was quoted as saying by Associated Press.