The Hindu : Front Page : Tsunami warning system a long process: expert

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jan 22, 2005

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Tsunami warning system a long process: expert

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JAN. 21. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands might have moved by about 1.25 metres towards the south-east and twisted anti-clockwise by several degrees because of the impact of the colossal earthquake and the tsunami in its wake that battered the region and South India on December 26.

Disclosing this, the Surveyor-General of India, P. Nag, said measurements have also shown that while several parts of the region have been uplifted, several others have been sunk. The Survey of India (SOI) has 12 control points in the region to determine its topography, all of which appear to have been disturbed due to the disaster's impact.

Need for remapping

Speaking to The Hindu on the sidelines of a Government-organised meeting of experts that looked at the various aspects of putting together a tsunami early warning system, Mr. Nag said there seemed to be a need for remapping the entire region afresh to get a clear picture of its topographical changes .

The Secretary, Department of Ocean Development, Harsh K. Gupta, said the proposed tsunami warning system would also help strengthen the forecast for cyclonic storm surges , and would involve the establishment of a comprehensive ocean observation network comprising sea bottom pressure recorders. It would also be used to develop inundation vulnerability maps for coastal areas.

Tad Murthy, president of the Tsunami Society, Canada, and one of the leading architects of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, said even while there was an urgent need for setting up a tsunami warning system for India and other countries in the Indian Ocean region, it must be realised that it could not be done overnight.

Preliminary work

A lot of preliminary work had to be done before a warning system could be made operational. Hundreds of computer-aided models needed to be developed to take care of different scenarios and kept in readiness so that response to a potentially dangerous earthquake could be fast. For example, on a map, the coastline of Tamil Nadu may seem like a single continuous line, but on the ground there were several gaps in the form of estuaries and other geographical features. All these could influence the impact of a tsunami.

Prof. Murthy said no single country could have a tsunami warming system of its own, since sea bottom pressure recorders and other equipment would have to be deployed in different places in the seas surrounding it for the warning to be timely and correct. In this regard, he suggested the formation of a common system for all countries in the Indian Ocean region under the United Nations. Prof. Murthy rejected the suggestion of India's becoming a part of the Pacific system on the ground that Pacific and Indian Ocean were different basins and since the Pacific system had been designed for detecting tsunamis occurring in that basin, it would not be useful for India.

Inaugurating the meeting, the Union Science and Technology Minister, Kapil Sibal, asked the scientists to explore the possibility of using satellites for the regular monitoring of geological faultlines that could cause massive earthquakes and tsunamis. Apart from creating mechanisms for early warning, there was also a need to streamline the systems for providing disaster relief, he said.

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