Sciences Kapil Sibal on Monday inaugurated the National Tsunami Early
Warning System set up at the Indian National Centre for Ocean
Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad.
The System has been established by MoES as the nodal ministry at a cost
of Rs 125 crore in collaboration with Department of Science and
Technology (DST), Department of Space (DoS) and the Council of
Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
The Indian Tsunami Early Warning System comprises a real-time network of
seismic stations, Bottom Pressure Recorders (BPR) and tide gauges to
detect tsunamigenic earthquakes and to monitor tsunamis.
The Early Warning Centre receives real-time Seismic data from the
national seismic network of the lndian Meteorological Department (IMD)
and other International seismic networks.
The system detects all earthquakes of more than six magnitude occurring
in the lndian Ocean, in the less than 20 minutes of occurrence.
The National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) has installed four
BPRs in the Bay of Bengal and the two BPRs in Arabian Sea. BPRs
installed in the deep ocean are the key sensors to confirm the
triggering of a Tsunami.
In addition, NIOT and Survey of India (SOI) have installed 30 Tide
Gauges to monitor the progress of tsunami waves. Integrated Coastal and
Marine Area Management (ICMAM) has customized and ran the Tsunami Model
for five historical earthquakes and the predicted inundation areas.
Communication of real-time data from seismic stations, tide gauges and
BPRs to the early warning centre is very critical for generating timely
tsunami warnings.
The inundated areas are being overlaid on cadastral level maps of 1:5000
scale that is extremely useful for assessing the population and
infrastructure at risk.
High-resolution Coastal Topography data required for modelling is
generated by the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) using ALTM and
Cartosat Data.
INCOlS has also generated a large database of model scenarios for
different earthquakes that are being used for operational tsunami early
warning.
Tsunamigenic zones that threaten the Indian Coast have been identified
by considering the historical tsunamis, earthquakes, their magnitudes,
location of the area relative to a fault, and also by tsunami modelling.
The east and west coasts of India and the island regions are likely to
be affected by tsunamis generated mainly by subduction zone related
earthquakes from the two potential source regions, viz., the
Andaman-Nicobar- Sumatra island arc and the Makran subduction zone north
of Arabian Sea.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has made an end-to-end
communication plan using INSAT.
A state-of-the-art early warning centre has been established at INCOlS
with all the necessary computational and communication infrastructure
that enables reception of real-time data.
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.
Seismic and sea-level data are continuously monitored in the Early
Warning Centre using a custom-built software application jointly
developed with MIS and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) that generates
alarms alerts in the warning centre whenever a pre-set threshold is crossed.
The efficiency of the end-to-end system was proved during the large
undersea earthquake of 8.4 M that occurred on September 12, 2007 in the
Indian Ocean.
For the dissemination of alerts to MHA a satellite-based virtual private
network for disaster management support (VPN DMS) has been established.
In case of confirmed warnings, the National Early Warning Centre has
been equipped with necessary facilities to disseminate the advisories
directly to the administrators, media and public through SMS, e-mails,
and Fax.
Periodic workshops will be organized for the user community to
familiarize them with the use of tsunami and storm surge advisories as
well as inundation maps.
Easily understandable publicity material on earthquake, tsunami and
storm surges has been generated and will be distributed to the general
public.
(this is not my own write-up; I have saved it for my documentation)
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