India's National Tsunami Early Warning System has been commissioned at the Indian National Cenre for Ocean Information Services in Hyderabad on Monday. Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Kapil Sibal inaugurated the facility.
Recognising the need for an early warning system for mitigation of ocean disasters that pose a severe threat to nearly 400 million people who live in the coastal belt, the Ministry of Earth Sciences took up the responsibility in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2004, following an earthquake off Indonesia.
The warning system has been established at an outlay of Rs 125 crore in collaboration with the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Space and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.
Tsunamigenic zones that threaten the Indian coast have been identified on the basis of previous Tsunamis, earthquakes, their magnitudes, location of the area relative to a fault, and also by tsunami modeling.
The East and West coasts of India and the island regions are likely to be affected by tsunamis generated from the Andaman-Nicobar- Sumatra island arc and the Makran zone north of Arabian Sea.
The system detects all earthquake events of more than six magnitude occurring in the Indian Ocean within 20 minutes of occurrence.
The efficiency of the end-to-end system was proved during the large undersea earthquake
of 8.4 magnitude that occurred on September 12, 2007, in the Indian Ocean.
The National Early Warning Centre will generate and disseminate timely advisories to the Control Room of the Ministry of Home Affairs for further dissemination to the Public. For the dissemination of alerts to MHA a satellite-based virtual private network for disaster management support has been established.
This network enables early warning centre to disseminate warnings to the MHA, as well as to the State Emergency Operations Centres.
In addition, messages will also be sent by phone, fax, SMS and e-mails to authorised officials. In case of confirmed warnings, the National Early Warning Centre is being equipped with necessary facilities to disseminate the advisories directly to the administrators, media and public through SMS, e-mail and fax. The cyclone warning network of IMD and electronic ocean information boards of INCOlS could be effectively used for dissemination of warnings directly to the public.
Text: Syed Amin Jafri in Hyderabad | Photograph: SnapsIndia
