Germany helps Indonesia install tsunami warning system
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
In 1992, years before developing the largest conventional seismic network in Central America, Nicaragua, which was not a member of the International Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific Ocean, was hit by four to ten meter tsunami waves that killed 170 of its citizens.
Wilsfried Strauch, from the Instituto Nicaraguense de Estudios Territoriales (INETER), described the country's experience in installing a Tsunami Early Warning System (TEWS) after the catastrophe. A system similar to this will soon be enjoyed by Indonesia, which saw up to 300,000 of its people killed when tsunami waves struck Aceh and North Sumatra provinces on Dec. 26.
Nicaragua now has digital seismic equipment that can detect long-period seismic waves and that can calculate correct magnitudes of very strong earthquakes.
Parameters of seismic events in Nicaragua and Central America are reported within 15 minutes of their occurrence. Stronger movements are reported automatically via email and fax to about 70 institutions, the mass media and people in Nicaragua and Central America. The capacity to report seismic events, he said, was important for tsunami warnings.
If an earthquake with a magnitude above 7.0 on the Richter scale is detected near the Pacific coast of Nicaragua or Central America, operators there issue a tsunami warning to the Civil Defense Organization in Nicaragua, Strauch said.
In Jakarta on Monday, Indonesia and Germany made a joint declaration concerning cooperation for the realization of a TEWS in this region.
Indonesia's State Minister for Research and Technology Kusmayanto Kadiman, along with Germany's Federal Minister of Education and Research Edelgard Bulmahn, signed an agreement that would assist the Indonesian government in installing TEWS components in tsunami-prone areas of its Indian Ocean coastlines.
The Sunda Shelf in Indonesian waters is said to be the most critical zone in the Indian Ocean. This was where the earthquake that caused the Dec. 26 tsunami originated.
"The international community is convinced that there is a need for an early global warning system for the Indian Ocean," said Bulmahn, adding that TEWS would be an open and decentralized system in which real-time data covering the entire Indian Ocean could be accessed internationally.
In the medium term, the system could also be used to warn against other natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, according to Bulmahn, and to indicate hazards by means of satellite-based communications networks.
Germany will provide assistance for TEWS development in Indonesia over a three-year period. The first stage, planned to finish in October this year, will be to deploy most of the TEWS equipment, beginning with the launch of the first ten GPS (Global Positioning System) buoys in Indonesian waters.
Other equipment will include 25 seismographs, 10 GPS stations, 10 GPS tide gauges and 20 ocean bottom pressure sensors.
According to Kusmayanto, the equipment will cost around 45 million euro.
He added that the equipment would be located in certain areas of the 12,000 kilometers of tsunami-prone coastline in the Indian Ocean. "To define the optimal spots, we will invite scientists from Germany and Indonesia (to determine these)."
The main problem comes beyond the implementation of the TEWS technology, according to Kusmayanto. "We need to make sure that the public receives and immediately acts upon being warned of possible disasters. We plan to broadcast (warnings) through, for example, television, radio, newspapers, mosque speakers and church bells."
He said that correct operation and maintenance of the technology was critical because data coming from the TEWS system would be available internationally.
Thus, capacity building measures would be an indispensable part of the concept, said Bulmahn. (005)