Friday, January 21 2005 15:45 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: With a view to keep country prepared in the event of a tsunami hitting the country in future, Department of Ocean Development has prepared a plan for establishing a tsunami warning system, Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said in New Delhi today (Jan 21, 2005).

"Natural disasters tell us how helpless we are in combating the fury of nature," Sibal said inaugurating a two-day brain storming session on the tsunami disaster of December 26, 2004.

"Our plan envisages a system for tsunami warning for India and countries of the region like Myanmar, Indonesia and Sri Lanka," Sibal said adding help from any international agency was welcome.

The project report has been made incorporating issues like improvement of the existing system and how to make information available to people, Sibal said. For this, an adequate ocean monitoring system and software was needed.

The entire system, to cost about Rs 125 crore, would take about two to two-and-a-half years, but devices called Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting System (DART) would be installed before the system becomes operational, he said.

Sibal said the Government had given consent for the money needed for the project. The country already had some system in place for earthquake monitoring which needed to be strengthened.

Though tsunamis are more common in the Pacific Ocean with eight tsunamis hitting it every year, it was the first recorded tsunami for India, Sibal said. However, it did not mean that the country should not be prepared to handle such a situation, he said.

The system to be developed is called 'Tsunami and Storm Surges - The Indian Initiative,' secretary of the department of ocean development Dr Harsh Gupta, said.

The Indian tsunami early warning system incorporates the needs of storm surge forecast too, he said adding the system design encompasses near real time determination of earthquake parametres in the two tsunamigenic zones of India Ocean region using a network of land based seismic stations.

It also involves establishing of a comprehensive real time ocean observational network comprising bottom pressure recorders around these two zones, developing numerical models for tsunami and storm surges, generating coastal inundation and vulnerability maps and setting up of a dedicated tsunami warning centre.

The plan involves capacity building, training and education of all stake holders, he said.

Dr Costas Synolakis, professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Southern California, said that for a tsunami warning system to be effective, education and planning as to which are the areas that should be evacuated, were needed.

UNESCO operates a tsunami warning system for the pacific region which issues free warning to its members. But a country needs to apply for its membership, he said claiming India had never applied for it.

Thus, while Indonesia and Thailand did get the warning, India did not. However, even Indonesia and Thailand could not utilise the warning, he said.

Sibal said it also needed to be explored whether satellites could be used to view the earth's faultiness. As during a disaster, electricity goes off, radios could be used for spreading information.