Tsunami warning project by September 2007
Tuesday June 21 2005 13:10 IST
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CHENNAI: Speedy alerts would form the most important constituent of the
proposed tsunami warning centres to be set up along the Indian Ocean, said
Santosh Kumar, Professor, National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM),
in the city on Monday.

Speaking at a seminar on 'State and Civil Society Collaboration in Disaster
Mitigation and Reconstruction', Kumar said, "Dissemination of information
forms the most vital part of containing a disaster. That should form the
number one priority of the proposed tsunami-warning centre.

Reiterating that 'fast alert' had been the hallmark of the 'Pacific Warning
Centre', he pointed out that in the US, there was a higly co-ordinated
network system with massive sirens for three minutes of continuous blowing
in the wake of a warning.

He added that the 'civil defence' was highly developed in that country
whereas we lacked such machinery.

The professor said that the proposed warning centre along the east-west and
southern regions of the Indian Ocean would have a highly instrumentalised
platform to detect the signs of a tsunami. The information gained would be
disseminated in no time to the mainland and further to the agencies
concerned.

The Rs 125-crore tsunami-warning project, which had already been initiated
in February this year would be completed by September 2007. While the
Department of Ocean Development, Government of India, would act as a nodal
agency for the project, Chennai-based National Institute of Ocean Technology
(NIOT) and NIDM, Ministry of Home Affairs, would be the other organisations
engaged in the R&D to build the centre.

K Premkumar of National Institution of Ocean Technology said that a tsunami
buoy network would be established which would complement the other apparatus
in place for detection. Buoys, developed by NIOT, are used to detect the
temperature and other features from the ocean bed to the top.

As many as 30 buoys are already present along the Indian Ocean. Forty more
would come in place.

A vulnerability test would also be conducted for the whole country to detect
places susceptible to natural disasters. The experts also stressed on the
need for community involvement in mitigating disasters.
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