Germany helps Indonesia install tsunami warning system

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)