Tsunami warning system could cost just €14m

A tsunami warning system could be built in the Indian Ocean in just a year and cost as little as €14m, a scientist said today.

But experts warn the high-tech network of sensors and buoys would be useless unless countries like Indonesia beef up communications to the coastal communities that would be hit by giant waves.

Many coastal villages that bore the brunt of last month’s earthquake and tsunami lack modern communication networks. Many do not even have telephones.

An Indian Ocean tsunami warning system is expected to dominate Thursday’s gathering of leaders from stricken nations and world donors following the quake and tsunami that killed 150,000 people.

“There’s no point in spending all the money on a fancy monitoring and a fancy analysis system unless we can make certain that the infrastructure for the broadcast system is there,” said Phil McFadden, chief scientist at Geoscience Australia, which has been tasked with designing an Indian Ocean system by the Australian government.

“That’s going to require a lot of work,” he said. “If it’s a tsunami, you’ve got to get it down to the last Joe on the beach. This is the stuff that is really very hard.”

A tsunami warning system already links 26 Pacific Ocean nations.

If it had been expanded to the Indian Ocean coastal countries, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration might have been able to warn them, the agency’s chief, Conrad Lautenbacher, said last week.

Over the years, the United Nations and other agencies that track tsunamis have endorsed establishing such a system for the Indian Ocean.

But the countries that suffered the highest death tolls, like Indonesia and Sri Lanka, say they lack the funds to finance such a system.

Thailand and Indonesia are pushing hard for the system. Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said it would help provide “security for tourists” that are the lifeblood of southern Thailand.

McFadden said a system for the Indian Ocean basin would include 30 seismographs to detect earthquakes.

Ten tidal gauges and six special DART (deep ocean assessment and reporting of tsunamis) buoys would also be needed determine whether an earthquake has generated a tsunami, he said.