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Tsunami warning system by 2008
20/12/2006 20:13 - (SA)
Berlin - The tsunami early-warning system that Germany is building off the coast of Indonesia can now pinpoint an undersea earthquake within five minutes, engineers said in Berlin on Wednesday.
As the December 26 second anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami approaches, Rolf Emmermann, chairperson of the construction consortium, said the system would be fully functional in November 2008.
One year ago, the semi-ready system required 100 minutes to deduce where an offshore quake had taken place. Germany has appropriated €46m from its aid and reconstruction budget to build the system, with the science ministry overseeing the project.
The 2004 tsunami waves were triggered by a ground movement on the seabed. Seawater surged onto land, killing more than 230 000 people.
A tsunami propagates at up to 800km per hour through the ocean. Depending on landforms, it can raise coastal water heights by 30 metres or more.
Emmermann said the greatest problem in South-East Asia was the brevity of time between the quake and the wave hitting.
"A tsunami in this region can reach a coast within 20 minutes," he said.
Two years ago, it took world seismologists 15 minutes just to establish that there had been an earthquake. There was no system to detect killer waves in the Indian Ocean. The German-built system includes both water-pressure sensors and seismometers.
These are connected to buoys in the ocean that transmit the data to satellites for analysis at a laboratory in Jakarta, Indonesia.
In a future pilot phase, the Sumatran city of Padang, home to two million people, is to be equipped with radio receivers that can emit a siren noise and broadcast advice on what to do if a wave is approaching.
Emmermann admitted that the system still needed a lot of technical improvement if it was to be effective by the end of 2008. He said it was still uncertain whether the sensors on the seabed would reliably transmit the necessary data.
Sapa-dpa
- SAPA
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