Preparing for natural disasters: Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System to become operational in 2006.

A tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean may become operational as early as next summer, according to an expert familiar with the plans.

"What we've said on paper is we'd like to get a fully operational system up and running by July 2006," said Laura Kong, director of the UNESCO International Tsunami Information Center, based in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Representatives from 28 Indian Ocean nations have united in an intergovernmental coordination group under UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, to plan and implement the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System.

"It's trying to bring everyone together to make sure we have a regional system of monitoring and communicating, and alerting at the national level," said Kong.

At the group's first meeting in August, officials set forth a plan calling for the establishment of seven regional tsunami advisory centers in the Indian Ocean basin, the installation and upgrading of coastal sealevel gauges, seismic instruments and stations, and the deployment of deep underwater sensors.

Collectively, the instruments will have the ability to detect earthquakes and to confirm whether or not a tsunami has been generated, said Kong. Then, each individual nation would be responsible for implementing a system to transmit tsunami alerts to its people.

The Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami claimed an estimated 300,000 lives. While there were seismic instruments and some seismographic stations in place at the time to detect earthquakes, there was no tsunami warning system in the region, said Kong. As a result, local authorities and residents could not be forewarned, she said.

Observation of the wave is the most critical piece of tsunami detection. In order to do that, countries need to have coastal or deep ocean gauges in place, said Kong.

Upgrades to seismic instruments and other coastal sea-level gauges in the Indian Ocean will begin this month. The participating nations are in the process of determining which deep ocean tsunami detection technologies to pursue. Germany, India and the United States are among the nations that have technologies available. The U.S. technology, called DART, or Deep-Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis, has been recognized as the leading system (see related article).

"DART for sure could have saved lives," said Christian Meinig, director of engineering at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, which developed, designed and built DART.

The multinational group expects to have 23 real-time sea-level stations established in the Indian Ocean by the end of the year.

"All countries in the Indian Ocean basin have some sea-level measuring device operating in their ports and bays. In the majority of cases, these are not real-time instruments," wrote Koichiro Matsuura , director-general of UNESCO, in a speech delivered by Patricio Bernal, executive secretary of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. The new instruments will operate on solar power to make the signals autonomous from the local energy source, which is usually lost during an emergency. Such technology will require closer supervision and maintenance, he added.

Tsunami advisory centers will be established in seven nations: Australia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand.

These stations will receive the data transmitted by the seismic instruments and the deep ocean sensors. In the event of a tsunami, the stations would send out an alert to local authorities, who would then commence evacuation procedures set forth by their respective nations.

The funding for constructing the warning system will come primarily from Indian Ocean nations, said Kong. Key countries, such as Australia and India, have committed tens of millions of dollars toward the effort.

"We're doing okay, but I think we could do a lot better and reach more people if there were more funding, more resources, more people trying to provide services," she said.

Officials estimate the system will cost $200 million in equipment and services alone.

Countries around the globe have pledged approximately $3 billion for reconstruction efforts in the Indian Ocean nations affected by the floods. However, the agencies overseeing the construction of the warning system have not received any significant amounts of money, said Kong.

"We'd like to make sure all these countries have sufficient funding to build their warning system," said Kong.

According to Kong, the U.S. tsunami warning system in the Pacific operates on an annual budget of less than $2 million. She estimates the cost of running and maintaining the Indian Ocean warning system to be about $25 million, based on an average of $1 million per country for staffing, operations and instrumental maintenance.

In April 2004, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO set up an interim tsunami monitoring advisory system for the Indian Ocean. Both the U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and the Japan Meteorological Agency have been providing earthquake information to 25 nations there, telling them where an earthquake occurred, its size and the level of tsunami threat, said Kong. But because neither country has tsunami-detection sensors in the Indian Ocean, they cannot confirm the generation of an actual tsunami following an earthquake.

In addition to the scientific equipment, Kong says an education campaign also is needed.

"I think just an increase of awareness means maybe half of the people wouldn't lose their lives," said Kong.

Costas Synolakis, director of the Tsunami Research Center at the University of Southern California, agrees. He has been traveling around the Indian Ocean basin to gather field data about tsunami inundation.

"What we learned in Asia is that those who recognized the signs [of a tsunami] were saved," he said.

Part of that awareness comes from knowing how tsunamis will impact a particular region.

"We need to have inundation maps that reflect different levels of risk," said Synolakis. "We should be able to have plans for 3-foot, 5-foot, 10-foot tsunamis. You really don't have the time to run computation models, no matter how quickly they run," he said.

These maps would tell people that if there's a 10-inch high tsunami in a particular region of the ocean, for instance, then it means in Madagascar, the wave would be 5 feet high. Armed with such information, authorities could better implement their evacuation plans, he said.

But Synolakis believes proper tsunami detecting equipment would have lessened the detrimental impact of the Dec. 26 tsunami.

"Had there been a NOAA buoy, yes, it would have helped, because the Pacific Warning Center would have known that a tsunami was generated. It would have saved lives, definitely. Even a single buoy," said Synolakis. "Tens of thousands of people could have been evacuated in 1.5 hours if you had a buoy between, say, Sri Lanka and Thailand," he added.

"It's hard to know how many fewer people would've died if there had been some kind of effective warning system. It's one thing to order an evacuation if you have two to three hours notice. It's another thing to prepare if you have 10 minutes notice," said Kong.

On June 14, a 7.2 earthquake off the coast of California generated a small tsunami that prompted the evacuation of some coastal areas in northern California and southern Oregon.

The alert was issued by the tsunami warning center in Alaska, which typically handles such matters for the west coast.

"It was a valid call from the warning center in Alaska," said Jay Wilson, earthquake and tsunami programs coordinator for the Oregon Office of Homeland Security's emergency management division.

Complications arose when the tsunami warning center in Hawaii issued a separate bulletin that was intended for its international audience.

"There were many people here who received it incidentally. It was interpreted as a cancellation for the initial warning," said Wilson.

The confusion resulted in some jurisdictions canceling their evacuations.

"It was a nightmare," said Synolakis. "People were calling us from all over, asking, 'what do we do?'"

Most tsunami warnings in the United States have come from earthquakes generated near Alaska or in the western Pacific Ocean, said Wilson.

"Those have all meant that they were hours from impending land fall. This one was different," he said. It made landfall in minutes. The generation of a tsunami warning by a near-shore earthquake was a first for the west coast.

"We'll never have an opportunity like this again, to be tested as thoroughly as we were in terms of the amount of work that has gone into assessing the level of preparedness," said Wilson. They still have a lot of work to do, he said.

Having a deep ocean sensor located 350 miles off the west coast was effective because "it allowed [the warning centers] to see it was a nondestructive wave," said Kong.

But Wilson countered, "It took almost an hour for the few centimeter high tsunami to be verified at one of the buoys off the Oregon coast to cancel the warning. Those buoys don't do us any good on a near-shore earthquake," he said.

The one country that has had the most experience with tsunamis caused by near-shore earthquakes is Japan, said Kong, because the country sits in a very active tectonic boundary.

In the last 2,000 years, 100- to 200,000 people there have lost their lives in tsunamis. The last devastating tsunami in Japan occurred in 1993. It killed about 250 people because they had a 10-minute warning to evacuate, said Kong.

As a result, Japan installed warning equipment that alerts coastal residents within minutes, said Kong.

"They have a very good system that they use--a lot of automation. And it's tied to the media in broadcasting alerts," said Kong.

Because of the national threat right offshore, they don't really need to use deep ocean sensors like the United States does, said Kong.

Scientists like Synolakis have been working to make tsunamis more predictable.

"What we have learned in the past three years is how to really use the signal that we get from the buoys to improve our real-time forecasting," he said. In five years, he hopes scientists will be able to forecast a tsunami much like meteorologists today forecast a hurricane's landfall.

Unlike tsunamis, hurricanes move very slowly, "so we have a much more difficult time in forecasting," he said. However, tsunamis tend to be more predictable because they don't change paths like hurricanes can.

The Indian Ocean tsunami has sparked a call for a global warning system, said Kong. UNESCO is working to implement such a system by 2007, and is considering expanding it to an "all-hazard" system.

Raytheon Corp. has developed a technology that it says would utilize satellite radio to transmit tsunami warnings (see related article).

"If this technology is providing a way to send messages efficiently and cost-effectively and without interfering with data, that would be great," said Kong.

The intergovernmental group meets this month in India to determine the selection of the deep ocean sensor technology and to finalize details of the warning system implementation.

RELATED ARTICLE: U.S. expanding tsunami alert network.

The United States plans to expand its tsunami warning system capabilities by deploying new technology to detect and monitor such waves in the Pacific, Caribbean and Atlantic basins.

The government has pledged $37.5 million over the next two years for the project, which includes the production and deployment of 31 new DART buoys, (Deep-Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis) manufactured by Science Applications International Corporation.

There are currently six DART buoys in operation in the Pacific Ocean, with three in the Gulf of Alaska, two off the coast of Oregon and one in the deep waters of Oahu, Hawaii. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency jointly operates another buoy in the southern Pacific with Chile.

"The DART technology is the only technology in the world that we know works," said Laura Kong, director of the International Tsunami Information Center, based in Honolulu, Hawaii.

According to Kong, two other countries--Germany and India--have developed DART-like technologies. But these technologies have not been scientifically documented. In August, Germany unveiled an instrument that it plans to deploy for the first time off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. India has yet to deploy its technology.

The U.S. DART system measures waves in the open ocean. It links two components: a sensitive pressure sensor, called a tsunameter, that sits at the bottom of the ocean, and a buoy that transmits pressure data to the country's two warning centers.

"It's the only direct measurement of a tsunami wave," said Christian Meinig, director of engineering at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. He helped to develop, design and build the original DART technology at PMEL.

This month, SAIC begins work on the new system, known as DART 2, according to Chuck Fralick, operations manager at the company.

DART 2 has a two-way communications link, said Meinig. The original DART system could only transmit data, he said. With the new system, someone at the warning center can initiate communication with the buoy. For instance, if there was a seismic event, you could tell the buoy to go into a high state of recording, he said.

DART 2 also incorporates new technology to double the life span of the electronic systems. Before, the buoy systems lasted one year, its deep ocean sensors for two. Now the systems can last two years and four years, respectively, said Fralick.

The current DART buoys transmit information via NOAA's high-power, 40-watt Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES). The new system will transmit using an Iridium commercial satellite.

Far below the surface of the ocean, the tsunameters can detect small changes in pressure, such as a wave smaller than 1 centimeter high, passing over.

"They have a resolution of a quarter millimeter," said Meinig.

Tsunameters sit upon the seafloor, 2,000 to 6,000 meters beneath the ocean's surface, held in place by a 720-pound anchor. The package includes a bottom pressure recorder, a computer and a transducer. Nearby, a moored 2.5-meter disk buoy carries an acoustic modern to communicate with the tsunameter. The buoy sends information via satellite to the National Data Buoy Center, the Richard H. Hagemeyer Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska.

"I truly believe these things can measure any significant tsunami wave in the ocean," said Fralick.

The original six DART buoys were placed in late 1990s, said Meinig. But they didn't become fully operational until late 2003. Shortly after, one of the buoys detected a tsunami of only a few inches created by an earthquake near the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. That information helped the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center to decide there was no reason to issue a warning for Hawaii.

"That saved millions of dollars," said Delores Clark, spokesperson for NOAA, because it prevented the need for evacuating millions of Hawaiians unnecessarily.

The DART technology came about because of a galvanizing event, said Meinig. In 1992, a 7.2 earthquake in California generated a tsunami that killed no one. But it raised concerns that a bigger earthquake could produce life-threatening tsunamis along the west coast. Congress asked NOAA to assess tsunami awareness and preparedness of the west coast. The agency approached scientists at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory to design a system to detect tsunamis in the Pacific. The scientists created DART, then transitioned it to SAIC, which now owns the technology, said Fralick.

Five tsunami warning systems exist around the globe. They are located in the United States, Japan, Russia, French Polynesia and Chile.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was created in 1949 following a 1946 tsunami that devastated a town in Hawaii, said Clark. The center in Alaska was set up in 1965 following an earthquake that measured more than 9 on the Richter scale, she said.

These warning centers monitor the pressure sensor data recorded by the DART buoys and transmit tsunami bulletins when appropriate. States affected by the bulletins then alert local authorities who then evacuate coastal areas.

"It's up to the county and local communities to determine how they're going to notify the public. Some have sirens; some have other methods," said Wilson. He said a senate bill in the Oregon state legislature has proposed a uniform siren signal to be coordinated among the local authorities along the state's coastline.

--GRACE JEAN

RELATED ARTICLE: Satellite radio could globalize tsunami warning.

Raytheon has developed a communications network that could transmit emergency warnings to satellite-radio receivers around the globe, according to a company representative.

The network, called Mobile Enhanced Situational Awareness (MESA), was designed as a warning system for tsunamis and other emergencies, says Frank R. Prautzsch, director of business development at Raytheon Network Center Systems.

Prautzsch says MESA offers more advanced capabilities than other tsunami-alert systems currently deployed. "There are some good systems out there, but most of them operate a regional service, or are a patchwork quilt of capabilities. There isn't anything that stitches everything together," he says.

The communications technology used in MESA is commercial satellite radio--XM in the United States and WorldSpace in Europe and Asia.

The system works as follows: a network of sensors, buried in the ocean floor, detects an event and then sends the data to a tsunami warning center. From there, a warning would be broadcast to XM radio receivers.

Tectonic plates by nature shift in elevation when there is an event, explains Prautzsch. The sensors, or sonobuoys, are buried in the ocean floor to put them in a better position to detect tectonic plate shifts over large areas, he says.

The sonobuoys would be dormant until an event occurred, at which time the sensors would surface and report it. When sensors reach the surface, radio frequency ID tags embedded in them would become activated, broadcasting the precise location of the sonobuoy in the event of a tectonic plate shift.

Keeping the sensors deep in the ocean floor extends their battery life and protects them from rough seas, he says. "The sea is a difficult environment. Sea state 6 for a sonobuoy is a real experience," says Prautzsch.

Raytheon operates a prototype MESA broadcast center in Singapore for regional services. "We are looking to expand those features, or tailor those features for various governments," says Prautzsch.

Every hotel along the beach in Thailand, for example, could have a receiver, says Prautzsch.

He declined to provide any cost estimates for the MESA system. The reliance on XM satellites and inexpensive commercial receivers helps keep the costs down, he says.

The company has yet to find customers for this technology. "We have groomed the concept, explored how to do this. There are perhaps experiments that need to be done," says Prautzsch. "What's really needed is the will of various nations to step forward. We need collective involvement to deal with international open waters, not just their own shorelines."

The same technology also is being marketed to the Department of Homeland Security as a warning system for any type of emergency.

"MESA is the only system that can be implemented without relying on cell towers ... I can hot-wire the United States literally overnight," he said.--GRACE JEAN