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.