India to get tsunami warning

2005-01-01 12:33

T V Padma and Christina Scott

New Delhi - India plans to install a deep-sea warning system to provide alerts of possible tsunamis, says a report on the Science and Development Network website.

India currently has 20 deep-sea buoys with sensors in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. But they are not equipped with the pressure sensors needed for advance warning of giant tsunamis.

Science minister Kapil Sibal told reporters that India needs to add 20 more of these buoys. It will also deploy between six and twelve expensive Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting Systems about six kilometres below the sea surface.

Essentially pressure sensors mounted on buoys, these will be able to detect and record changes in seawater movements and transmit the signals to a satellite, which will in turn relay the information to stations on land. The entire project will cost an estimated $27m and take two-and-a-half years to complete, Sibal said.

Tsunamis are rare

Tsunamis are rare in the Indian Ocean, and the South Asian nations most affected by the powerful tidal waves on Boxing Day - India, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives - did not have a tsunami warning system on the lines of the Pacific Tsunami Warning System that alerts 26 countries.

Scientists told the Independent newspaper in Britain that they knew that a deadly tsunami was heading towards the coastlines of Asian nations. But they were unable to provide effective warnings because of a lack of disaster alert systems in the region.

Within 15 minutes of the 26 December earthquake off the coast of Indonesia, Hawaii's Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre sent alerts to 26 countries. But it was a further 45 minutes before warnings were broadcast on radio and television in Thailand.

Researchers on Australia's Cocos Island also detected the tsunami, but could not reach the relevant officials in South and South-East Asian nations. According to Geoscience Australia, the country's geological research agency, better communications systems in the countries affected could have meant that warnings were delivered 15 minutes sooner in Thailand.

For Sri Lanka, whose coast was hit by the tsunami two-and-a-half hours after the earthquake, even more time could have been bought.

Expensive technologies for the detection of tsunamis have been a low priority for governments of impoverished countries such as India, Malaysia and Thailand, as the waves are rare in the Indian Ocean compared to their frequency in the Pacific. Nonetheless, scientists have in the past called for greater better preparation against the threat of tsunamis.

In June 2004, for example, specialists at the United Nations Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission warned that the Indian Ocean faced a significant threat from tsunamis and that no warning network was in place.

Given the rarity of tsunamis in the region and the countries' scarce economic resources, the south Asian countries did not previously consider a tsunami warning system to be a high priority. Other experts have suggested that protecting mangrove forests along the coastlines would also be effective - and considerably cheaper.

But Harsh Gupta, secretary of the Department of Ocean Development, told SciDev.Net that India will develop whatever instruments and sensors it can and procure the rest from abroad.

India also plans to liaise with countries in South-East Asia - such as Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand - that already have the software for such warning systems, and will share data with its south Asian neighbours.

"Right now we will have an intellectual relationship with the Pacific system - sharing data and know-how informally," says Gupta. "A more formal scientific link-up with the Pacific system can be done once the Indian Ocean system is in place."

The issue of whether India should develop its own tsunami warning system or join the Pacific system has generated considerable debate since Sunday's disaster. Sibal and department of science and technology officials point out that the Pacific system only gives information in the eastern Pacific region, whereas South Asia lies to the west.

But Syed Qazim, former secretary of the department of ocean development and currently vice-chair of the Society for Indian Ocean Studies, cautions that building up a tsunami prediction network in the Indian Ocean will be a "gigantic task" that would cost millions of dollars.

Once a century "But the question that will confront us soon will be: what will be the cost of predicting something which happens once in a century," he told The Indian Express newspaper. Qazim called on India to invite tsunami experts to analyse what happened and advise the country on the likelihood of it happening again before large quantities of money are committed any tsunami detection systems.

In a message to the University of Hyderabad on its convocation day, India's president Abdul Kalam suggested India could either have an Indian control centre that is connected to the Pacific tsunami warning system, or an integrated technological solution comprising sensors, communications system, networking and high-intensity tidal warning systems.

Kalam pointed out that after an earthquake occurred, it took three hours for giant dynamic waves of tsunami dimensions to build up. A tsunami warning system could have helped evacuate people living within the three-hour travel time from the epicentre of the earthquake.

But MS Swaminathan, chair of the Chennai-based MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, points out that such an advance warning system will be useful only if there is a system of getting the information across to local communities in time.

Swaminathan suggests using community radio or even simple loudspeakers to convey any information alerts to local communities.

India's Department of Science and Technology has convened a meeting of scientists early next month to discuss plans to set up the tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean.

Such a system would require technology, trained staff, and communications systems allowing coordinated responses across the region. Japan ? which is particularly prone to earthquakes and tsunamis ? has offered technical assistance.

Japan spends $20m a year on a system of 300 earthquake sensors relaying real-time information by satellite to centres that coordinate evacuation warnings and other responses to imminent tsunamis, according to an article by Bennett Richardson in the Christian Science Monitor.

Japanese technology developed in the past 12 months allows the size, speed, and direction of a tsunami to be calculated and transmitted in seconds. But this will be of little comfort to the survivors of the most recent tsunami - unless they form a lobby group to make sure this year's disaster never happens again without warning. - Science and Development Network

- News24