India gets 'most modern' tsunami warning set-up

Three years after tsunami battered many coastal parts of the country, India today unveiled the "most modern" tsunami early warning centre that will issue alert for the killer waves within 13 minutes of an earthquake.

The National Early Warning System for Tsunami and Storm Surges in the Indian Ocean was dedicated to the nation by the Minister of Earth Sciences, Kapil Sibal, at a ceremony attended by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Rajasekhar Reddy, top scientists and senior government officials.

The tsunami warning centre has been set up at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) here.

"We now require about seven minutes to analyse the earthquake data and another six minutes to run simulation models to generate alerts," Sibal said, adding the scientists were working to reduce this time by half.

Peter Koltermann, head, Tsunami Co-ordination Unit Inter-governmental Oceanographic Commission, UNESCO, described the system as the "most modern" in the world.

"The Indian system is completely different from the Pacific Tsunami Warning System. It is the most modern system as INCOIS has adopted a multi-hazard approach in developing it," Koltermann said.

The warning centre, which has been established at a cost of Rs 125 crore, will also issue alerts for typhoons and storm surges that wreak havoc along the eastern coastline.

"We had promised the country to put in place a tsunami warning system soon after the December 2004 tsunami devastated many coastal parts of the country. We deliver the system today," Sibal said.

The warning centre has been established by the Ministry of Earth Sciences in collaboration with the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Space and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

It will generate and give timely advisories to the ministry of home affairs for dissemination to the public, for which a satellite-based virtual private network for disaster management support has been established.

The network enables early warning centre to pass on warnings to the home ministry and the state emergency operations centres.

Addressing a press conference later, Sibal said there were problems with the mechanism to inform the public about a possible tsunami strike which were being addressed.

"The last-mile linkages are not entirely to our satisfaction. We are working on alerting the masses using SIMS, public address systems and other means," he said.

Scientists installed two bottom pressure recorders (BPR) and key sensors that indicate the generation of tsunami off the Gujarat coast in the Arabian Sea late last month.

Four BPRs have already been installed in the Bay of Bengal region and were put to test on September 12 when a massive undersea earthquake hit southern Sumatra.

The 8.4 magnitude earthquake in the southern Sumatra region triggered tsunami alerts in various adjoining countries, including India.

"There are two tsunami-genic zones in our vicinity "" the Andaman-Sumatra trench in the Bay of Bengal and the Makran coast in the Arabian Sea," said INCOIS Director Shailesh Nayak explaining the need to install BPRs in the two regions.