Tsunami Warning Centre’s workshop today

The Indian Tsunami Early Warning Centre (ITEWC) will conduct a national workshop at INCOIS, Gajularamaram, on the 10th anniversary of the devastating Tsunami that killed lakhs of people today.

“The workshop will focus on the technical roadmap for the warning system and also on development of standard operating procedures for disaster management authorities,” a release from ITEWC said.

The Warning Centre said it has strengthened its warning procedures by evolving with new strategies and methodologies, and are capable of detecting the tsunamigeneic earthquakes within minutes, thereby issuing timely advisories.

During the event, a hypothetical earthquake event of the west coast of Northern Sumatra would be introduced and an emergency situation would be simulated to elicit constructive discussions from the participants to enhance their plans, policies and procedures.

Union Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan would inaugurate the workshop.

"Currently, the Tsunami Early Warning System is capable of detecting the tsunamigeneic earthquakes within 10-20 minutes and issues timely tsunami advisories to disaster management officials as well as to the vulnerable communities," it said.

“Although, a decade ago an extensive technology and procedures were in place to detect tsunamis in the Pacific Ocean, no system was in place in the Indian Ocean, which substantially increased the devastation of the 2004 Tsunami,” it said.

"Realising the devastative potential of tsunamis, the Government of India directed Ministry of Earth Sciences to set up an early warning system within earliest possible time at INCOIS in collaboration with NIOT, ICMAM, IMD, SOI and NRSC as the major participating institutions," the release said. "The criteria for the generation of tsunami advisories for a particular region of the coast are based on the available warning time and estimated water height," it said.

The future work is focussed towards sea level inversion, real-time inundation modelling, use of near-field GPS measurements for real-time rupture characterisation and 3D mapping of vulnerable coastal areas.

The National Tsunami Early Warning Centre, set up at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), operational since 2007.

An interim tsunami warning centre was established at ESSO-INCOIS in the first quarter of 2005 to issue tsunami bulletins generated based on the seismic information.

The interim services were later replaced by setting up a state-of-the-art Indian Tsunami Early Warning System (ITEWS) in October 2007 with a real-time network of seismic stations, tsunami buoys, tide gauges and 24x7 operational warning centres to detect tsunamigenic earthquakes, to monitor tsunamis and to provide timely advisories to vulnerable community.