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Indian Ocean Nations Agree to Share Tsunami Data

Posted on: Friday, 5 August 2005, 06:45 CDT

PERTH -- Indian Ocean nations agreed on Friday to share real-time seismic data, despite some security sensitivities, and to set up seven regional tsunami warning centers instead of one.

The agreements were announced at the end of the inaugural meeting of the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System in the western Australian city of Perth.

India has dropped its initial reluctance to sharing real-time seismic data, said Harsh Gupta, who heads India's Department of Ocean Development and chairman of the 20-nation group's meeting.

"There was some sensitivity about our Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), but we are finding ways to overcome that," Gupta told a news conference on the final day of the three-day meeting.

An EEZ is a seazone extending from a nation's coast, usually about 200 nautical miles, which gives the state special rights over marine resources.

Conference sources said India, which has a blue water navy and nuclear weapons capability, was also worried about releasing real-time data that might have national security implications.

"Our commission was established during the height of the Cold War," said Patricio Bernal, who heads the United Nations' Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) that is spearheading the Indian Ocean warning system.

"We have long experience in dealing with sensitive material."

AVOIDING CONFUSION

There were no warning systems when the strongest earthquake in at least 40 years triggered an unprecedented tsunami that is feared to have killed as many as 232,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations and left more than a million homeless.

In a surprise move, the Perth meeting proposed seven regional warning centers, whose job will be to send out advisories about potential tsunamis to countries around the Indian Ocean rim.

In addition to Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand -- who had been competing to host a sole regional warning center -- new ones will be set up in Iran and Pakistan. That is because a faultline in the Arabian Sea is thought to be capable of triggering a devastating tsunami, Gupta said.

One regional center would have been preferable, but the debate over which country would have the lead role -- with the prestige and developmental money that comes with it -- could not be resolved, conference sources said.

Confusion could reign with seven centers sending advisories to the 25 countries that have now set up national warning centers.

"A major issue to be addressed is the protocol to be adopted to coordinate the multiple advisories to avoid confusion in the receiving nations," a conference working paper said.

EXPENSIVE TO MAINTAIN

The warning centers will be manned around the clock and thus expensive to maintain. Australia is spending A$68.9 million on its center. India will also use its center to monitor the annual spate of typhoons that hit the Bay of Bengal, Gupta said.

Two dozen sea-level gauges scattered in the Indian Ocean will be fully operational by year's end, broadcasting real-time tidal data to satellites that will beam the information down to Pacific tsunami warning centers in Tokyo and Honolulu, Bernal said.

Indian Ocean nations are relying on the Pacific centers for tsunami alerts until they get their own centers up and running.

A second, more expensive detection system, targeted for completion by next July, will involve putting up to 30 pressure gauges on the seabed that would more accurately -- and far more quickly -- detect the approach and direction of a big tsunami.

The scientific community now agrees that the magnitude of the Dec. 26 earthquake that struck off the coast of northern Sumatra was 9.3, making it the second-strongest in history, according to the geophysicists, oceanographers and seismologists at the Perth conference.

The authoritative U.S. Geological Survey has said research was continuing on that and was sticking to its 9.0 estimate for the time being. The most definitive rating of the Dec. 26 quake put the magnitude at 9.15.

Source: REUTERS/By Bill Tarrant

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