RI concerned about cost of tsunami warning system

RI concerned about cost of tsunami warning system

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

An official has questioned whether the government can afford to
operate and maintain the planned Indian Ocean Tsunami Early
Warning System (TEWS).

The director of the Geophysics Data and Information Center at
the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG), Prih Hajardi, said
the operation and maintenance costs could be as high as
US$300,000 per month for each deep-sea tsunami assessment and
reporting (DART) system.

"The operational and maintenance costs will be quite high
because we need to check and clean the system on a weekly and
monthly basis. Regular maintenance is important because the
regional and national transmission of tsunami monitoring requires
satellites," he said on Thursday.

Prih said that in the Indian Ocean alone, at least 10 DART
buoys were necessary for accurate and fast warnings.

The Indian Ocean tsunami on Dec. 26 that killed hundreds of
thousands of people led to calls to set up a tsunami early
warning system in the region. Indonesia's Aceh province was the
hardest-hit region by the tsunami.

Germany earlier this week agreed to provide 45 million euros
($85.85 million) worth of equipment for the development of a TEWS
in Indonesia for monitoring, assessments and the online and real-
time transmission of data through a satellite system.

Visiting German education and research minister Edelgard
Bulmahn said that under a bilateral agreement, Germany would
provide the TEWS technology, while Indonesia would be responsible
for operating and maintaining the system.

The TEWS components consist of 10 global positioning system
(GPS)-based buoys, 25 seismographs, 10 GPS stations, 10 GPS tide
gauges and 20 ocean bottom pressure sensors for the DART system.

A source said the operational and maintenance costs for the
whole TEWS system could run as high as $60 million a year. The
source added that a proposal for the operational and maintenance
budget had been submitted to the National Development Planning
Board.

Prih said the installation of the TEWS would require the BMG
to upgrade its system.

"We will upgrade the current analog system to provide help and
to back up data. The old equipment will need to be 'retired'
because we need a digital system for the TEWS."

He said the BMG was currently preparing to implement the TEWS.
"We are currently determining seismograph locations and planning
to set up the telecommunications system for data gathering and
dispatch from the BMG to regional and national meteorology and
geophysics agencies, which requires a Very Small Aperture
Terminal, or VSAT, to enable broadband speed Internet service
through satellite."

The TEWS components will likely be located around North
Sumatra, along the south-coast of East Nusa Tenggara, around the
Banda Sea in Maluku, and in North and Central Sulawesi, according
to Prih. (005)