US to design global tsunami warning system

THE United States is moving on several fronts toward a global tsunami warning system following the Asian catastrophe.

A design is emerging from the state department’s Global Disaster Information Network (GDIN) for protecting huge populations in coastal areas, and will be presented to the United Nations-sponsored World Conference on Disaster Reduction this month in Kobe, Japan.

US Senator Joe Lieberman is proposing legislation to have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) establish a system of up to 50 buoy-based sensors throughout the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans and the Caribbean Sea.

The system would need the cooperation of other coastal nations.

“We’re already looking into the practical elements of what such a system would be, what it would cost and who would run it,” said Larry Roeder, a top US state department policy adviser for disaster management, who heads the GDIN.

“There has been talk over the years that maybe we should have a global system, but it’s expensive.”

Mr Roeder said because of a massive movement of population to coastal areas there are “lots of other parts of the world where you have large population centres along the coast, and that’s one of the reasons we’ve been seeing lots of disasters.”

The GDIN has conducted experiments based on real crises in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia, even simulating a response to an earthquake in Russia.

In the case of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake on December 26 in the Indian Ocean, however, there were no instruments to let scientists know the massive tsunami was on the way.

It was two hours after the quake that NOAA officials learned through internet wire service reports a tsunami had hit Sri Lanka, which does not participate in the Pacific warning system.

Had those instruments been in place, NOAA administrator Conrad C Lautenbacher said thousands of lives might have been spared.

Scientists in Australia also are designing an Indian Ocean warning system that they say could be built within a year for about €15 million, but that cost doesn’t include the communications links needed to warn people in coastal communities to flee before the giant waves arrive.

“That’s going to require a lot of work,” said Geoscience Australia’s Phil McFadden. “If it’s a tsunami, you’ve got to get it down to the last Joe on the beach.”