UNESCO devises strategy for tsunami warning system
UNESCO devises strategy for tsunami warning system
Agence France-Press, Port Louis
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said on Tuesday it was ready to lead efforts to set up a global early warning system that could avert another tragedy on the scale of the Asian tsunami disaster.
"Any such system goes far beyond the installation of seismic equipment to measure and pinpoint earthquakes," said UNESCO chief Koichiro Matsuura in a statement issued here on the sidelines of a UN conference on small islands.
Experts at monitoring institutes in Hawaii and Vienna knew immediately that an earthquake had taken place off the coast of Sumatra on Dec. 26, unleashing tidal waves the left more than 156,000 dead.
But no warning system was in place to relay the information to Indian Ocean countries and allow them to take measure to protect their citizens.
While the technology to detect earthquakes is available, "what is missing is the communications networks, public awareness and national disaster planning that are essential to alert populations quickly," said UNESCO Director-General Matsuura.
These components are key to educating people about how to help themselves, rapid evacuations of threatened areas and assisting those wounded or displaced by disasters, he noted.
UNESCO helped set up the existing tsunami early warning system for the Pacific in 1968 and maintains that such alert mechanisms should be in place for the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, Caribbean and South West Pacific.
Matsuura's comments came as delegates from 110 countries attend the small island's conference in Mauritius this week that is focusing on the plight of the countries most vulnerable to natural disasters.
Setting up a global warning system will also be the focus of a conference in Kobe, Japan next week.
Leading expert Laura Kong from the Hawaii-based International Tsunami Information Center said scientists, working with governments and international agencies, were looking at the stations and networks in place to see what might be needed to set up a global system.
She said some 10 to 20 deep-water ocean buoys, costing about US$250,000 each, would probably be needed to monitor water levels in places where no stations can be built.
Between 50 to 100 water-level stations, at a cost of $30,000 each, would have to be set up as part of the global system, she said.
"The cost will be negligible compared to the benefit we will get," said Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization.
"This will be a very effective way to prevent loss of life in the first place and also to minimize the economic damage," he said.