Tsunami alert systems being fast-tracked: UN

Tsunami alert systems being fast-tracked: UN

Jay Shankar, Agence France-Presse/Hyderabad, India

Indian Ocean nations are rapidly upgrading tsunami detection systems and plan to put in place a deep-sea sensor network so those at risk can be warned faster, a UN conference heard on Wednesday.

Twenty-three nations in the Indian Ocean rim will have a "modern" tsunami detection network by June 2006, said Patricio Bernal, a top official at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Bernal, who is UNESCO assistant director general, was speaking at the UN's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission meeting in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad to discuss progress towards setting up a proper warning system.

"The program entails enabling (data receiving) stations in these nations to be upgraded and be able to broadcast in real time," Bernal said on the sidelines of the three-day conference that opened on Wednesday.

"Current systems are useless as they record data once every month or two months. You need to record the data every 30 seconds and need a reliable power source," he said.

"During tsunamis the first casualty is power. So solar panels need to be used to broadcast data to a satellite. All the nations are changing their systems to record on real time," he added.

More than 100 scientists, meteorologists and government officials are attending the second meeting of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission set up by UNESCO in June with a mandate to establish a fast tsunami warning system.

Most of the 29 Indian Ocean nations did not have an adequate warning system when a massive undersea earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra last December unleashed giant waves, killing 217,000 people in 11 countries.

Since the waves struck, Indonesia completed the initial phase of a tsunami early warning system in November. Thailand has also installed a system with U.S. help and India has said it is spending 1.25 billion rupees (US$26 million) to set up a system by 2007.

The first commission meeting in August in the Australian city of Perth set up working groups to deal with various aspects of the project such as measuring seismic activity, data collection and exchange and hazard identification.

The commission's second meeting in Hyderabad is aimed at reviewing progress toward these goals.

Bernal, who also is the commission's executive secretary, said African nations, Indian Ocean islands and nations around the Indian Ocean rim were also upgrading detection networks.

While "the focus is now on upgrading existing seismographic and sea-level networks," he said the UN group was also planning to have a deep-sea sensor network in the Indian Ocean by 2010.

"Two deep-sea sensors have already been deployed in Sumatra off Indonesia with the help of German cooperation. We're planning to deploy them in the Bay of Bengal, Pakistan, Western India and Iran as well," he said.

Bernal said upgrading existing detection networks and installing deep-sea sensors would cost a total of $200 million.

"The real problem is not the cost alone. The nations will have to maintain them 24 hours, 365 days a year and you need specialists. That cost needs to be factored in," he said.

A warning system is already in place in the Pacific Ocean region. It can issue a warning less than an hour after the occurrence of an earthquake that could cause a tsunami.

India, which has set up an interim tsunami warning center, said it would launch a full-fledged center by September 2007.

"All the systems such as pressure recorders, buoys, tide gauges, radars and mapping of coastal areas vulnerable to inundation will be ready by then," V. Sampath, director of the Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services, said.