India to set up tsunami warning system

Hyderabad – To make certain that the Indian subcontinent is never again taken by surprise by a tsunami as it was in December 2004, the Indian government will be setting up a tsunami warning system in Hyderabad to monitor and analyse seismic changes in the ocean, Christian Today has confirmed.

The December 26 killer waves that inundated the coastlines of South Asia and South–east Asia, devastated the southern coastlines of India, leaving thousands dead and millions homeless.

However, the Rs. 125 crore (USD $ 30 million) tsunami warning system, that is a part of a multi–disciplinary project that the government has embarked on to monitor occurrence of all future tsunami waves is expected to prevent destruction of such magnitude.

The tsunami warning system will be located at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information. The Centre is in the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University campus, in Hyderabad. The project will also involve the National Geophysical Research Institute, the National Remote Sensing Agency and the National Institute of Oceanography.

"The tsunami has delivered two stark messages. The first is that we were unprepared. The second is that we cannot remain unprepared any longer," said Valingaman Ramamurthy, secretary of the Department of Science and Technology.

“The plan includes upgrading India's earthquake monitoring infrastructure and setting up a network to observe the ocean in 'real–time',” he said. “This requires instruments to record the pressure at the bottom of the ocean, gauges which constantly monitor tidal flow and a system to monitor the coast using radar technology.”

“Other aspects of the plans include developing statistical models of tsunamis and storm surges (water pushed toward the shore by strong winds in a storm) and mapping coastal areas at risk of flooding,” he added.

According to Dr. Harsh K Gupta, Secretary, Department of Ocean Development, the multi–disciplinary project that would come in place by the year 2007 will save millions of lives by detecting the presence of tsunami much before it strikes the land.

“Ocean bottom pressure sensors will be planted on the floor in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea to discriminate between a tsunami wave and a normal wave and make an accurate analysis and prediction,” Dr. Gupta explained.

The participating institutes will collect the data from the ocean sensors via satellite. The data will be monitored and sent to Hyderabad by the National Institute of Oceanography and Technology at Chennai for analysis.

“The multi–disciplinary project will receive seismic data through satellite and juxtapose it with a large amount of data to give a Tsunami warning immediately,” Dr. Gupta said.

“The amplitude of the wave will decide the assessment of a seismic wave as an earthquake or a Tsunami. A large amount of seismic data is ready. The system will be set up soon,” he explained.

Meanwhile, India's plans for a tsunami–warning system have come in for some criticism.

Tadepalli Satyanarayana Murty, vice–president of the International Tsunami Society who helped set up tsunami–warning centres in Canada and the USA believes that the warning centre is being set up in the wrong place.

According to him, the warning system should be located in Visakhapatnam on India’s east coast because the city is "ideally located in the middle of the Bay of Bengal coast and has a rocky landscape that provides higher ground".

“A separate centre for tsunami research should be set up at the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa on the country's west coast,” he added.

Moreover, a potential flaw in India's future plans is its insistence on its own tsunami–warning centre, which goes against international experts' calls for a regional centre covering the 36 countries in the Indian Ocean rim.

"We are open to collaboration with international agencies and sharing our data, but we will have our own centre," insisted Harsh Gupta, secretary of the Department of Ocean Development.

However, according to Murty, developing its own warning system could put India at a disadvantage.

First, he pointed out, it will not have access to tide gauge data from other countries where earthquakes could generate a tsunami that hits India.

Second, there could be too many false alarms.

According to Murty, even the reliable Pacific tsunami warning system in Hawaii averages two or three false alarms for every real event. This is because when an earthquake with the potential to cause a tsunami is recorded near a coast, people sometimes overreact and issue an alarm.

"You need a confirmation from at least one more tide gauge, preferably closest to the epicentre of the quake before a warning can be issued," he said.

"For this you need to be part of an international network."

Meanwhile, the tsunami rehabilitation efforts in the southern Indian states and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, termed as one of the biggest that the government has ever undertaken in the country, are still going on.

The World Bank has already approved $ 528.5 million aid, including $465 million credit, for the reconstruction of coastal villages devastated by the December 26 tsunami disaster in India.

The funds, of which $465 million is a soft loan from World Bank's development arm International Development Association (IDA), would be utilised to reconstruct public buildings, revive livelihoods in fisheries and agriculture, as well as for capacity building in housing reconstruction and coastal management.

While total project cost is estimated at $682.8 million, including contingencies, the Indian government would bear the remaining costs.

Soon after the tsunami disaster, the Indian government had approached the World Bank and Asian Development Bank with a request for rebuilding infrastructure, both public and private, and for rehabilitation of livelihoods.

According to news sources, the government had also approached the two multilateral agencies for assistance in developing disaster prevention and management systems for the future.