RI to establish tsunami early warning system

RI to establish tsunami early warning system

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia, the nation most affected by last year's tsunami, will
be the second country in the world to establish an early warning
system for tsunamis by end of the year, thanks to a grant from
the German government, which has pledged to provide 10 sensor
buoys to detect tidal waves in the Indian Ocean.

Two of the 10 pledged sensor buoys will be handed over by
German Minister of Education and Research Edelgard Bulmahn to
Indonesian State Minister for Research and Technology Kusmayanto
Kadiman at Tanjung Priok Port on Monday.

The two ministers attended a ceremony in Hamburg on Aug. 25 to
discuss the first shipment of sensors buoys, which were developed
by Potsdam researchers.

Equipped with a global positioning system (GPS), the buoys
will be able to detect tremors under the seabed and abnormal
waves on the surface of the sea in real time and transmit the
warnings to tsunami alarm centers on land so that communities
have time to escape to higher ground before the waves hit.

Currently, there is only one tsunami early warning system in
the Pacific Ocean, which is operated by the U.S. and Japan.

Assistance to Deputy Minister for Assessment of Science and
Technology at the Ministry of Research and Technology, Idwan
Suhari, said the sensor buoys would be installed in the most
earthquake-prone areas.

"We are still studying the exact locations. They might be
installed near the west coast of Sumatra island," he said on
Thursday.

He said the buoys would be placed about 1,000 kilometers from
shore.

The Dec. 26 tsunami, resulting from a marine earthquake
measuring 9.3 on the Richter scale, killed an estimated 220,000
people in the Indian Ocean region, including 557 German citizens.

Indonesia, according to Idwan, is working hard to upgrade
equipment to avoid further loss of human life should the country
be struck by another tsunami like the one in December, which
devastated Aceh and Nias island and left 129,000 people dead.

"When the disaster hit Aceh and Nias, Indonesia had no
equipment to monitor the sea level in real time," he said.

"But with the help from the international community through
the International Oceanographic Commission in April, we built a
sea level monitoring station with real time in Sibolga, North
Sumatra," he said.

He said that countries like Germany, Japan, Australia and
China had agreed to provide assistance for the development of an
early warning system in Indonesia.

He said that the German government, for example, had agreed to
provide 25 seismometers, 10 GPS stations, 10 GPS control tide
gauges, 10 GPS buoys and 20 ocean bottom pressure sensors.

He added that the government would also establish more
seismograph stations to help speed up any quake warnings.

"By December 2005, we will have 28 seismograph stations from
the current eight, so we will be able to detect the location and
scale within five to 10 minutes after a quake," he said.