LONDON (AlertNet)- When a 9.15 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia on Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean countries received no warning of an imminent tsunami that was to kill almost 230,000 people.
Five years later, following much investment and political wrangling, a vast network of seismic centres, sea and coastal instruments and national and international agencies is in place to alert countries in the region to a similar threat.
But experts say the vital links of the early warning chain will only be maintained if countries adopt a multi-hazard approach, ensuring the warning stations and technology that have been set up are also used to alert people to typhoons, tropical cyclones, storm surges, floods and earthquakes.
The infrequency of tsunamis, coupled with the costliness of high-tech warning systems, means there is a risk governments and communities will be reluctant to keep up the levels of investment needed to ensure the systems work if they are not used for other potential and more frequent disasters.
Â?Any warning system you donÂ?t notice is a dormant system, and treasuries donÂ?t like anything that they cannot justify,Â? said Peter Koltermann, head of the Tsunami Coordination Unit for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), which began coordinating a warning system for the Indian Ocean in 2005.
Â?The time scales are different - with tsunamis you donÂ?t have time to think about it, with tropical cyclones or storm surges you have two to three days - but the solution is the same when it comes to awareness and preparedness, and this is the most costly and problematic area,Â? he told AlertNet.
COSTLY EQUIPMENT
Under the umbrella of the IOC, Indian Ocean countries since 2005 have either set up or beefed up national tsunami warning centres. Deep-ocean and sea-level buoys have been installed along with coastal gauges, watch towers and other instruments.
At the local level, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the country or area, systems are in place to alert and evacuate residents from coastal areas.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii and the Japan Meteorological Agency in Tokyo currently provide tsunami alerts to the region, but by 2011 at the latest so-called Regional Tsunami Watch Providers in Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and a regional centre in Bangkok are set to take over this function.
However, some experts are concerned that sensitive and expensive components of the tsunami early warning system will not last unless the system is tested reasonably frequently.
Â?The amount of investment needed to sustain these systems is quite huge, particularly for example for maintaining the DART (Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis) buoys or tidal gauges,Â? said Sanny Jegillos, a regional coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme in Bangkok, pointing to vandalism of the buoys by local fishermen.
Â?It is a big challenge to convince countries that it is worth the big investment at the technological and community level,Â? he added.
Recent disasters in the Asia-Pacific prove the importance of a multi-hazard approach to early warning. Between late September and mid-October this year, typhoons, floods, earthquakes and a tsunami hit the region.
"If you are very quiet because you are only waiting for tsunamis, there will be a chance that nobody will remember you are there,Â? said Bartholomew Bautista, deputy director of the Philippines Institute of Volcanology and Seismology and a visiting professor at the Bangkok-based
Â?If you are noisy, always giving forecasts and giving assistance to countries for other hazards that are more frequent, people will see that you are there and working," he added.
BANGKOK-BASED HUB
The ADPC in Bangkok has been coordinating efforts since 2005 for a multi-hazard early warning centre and system. A consortium of Indian Ocean countries are involved in the project, known as the Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (RIMES).
RIMES will work alongside the national and regional watch providers set up as part of the IOC process and will also share information with Hawaii and Japan.
Funding to prepare the Indian Ocean region for another tsunami has come from donor countries, the United Nations and national governments.
Indian Ocean countries have allocated funds for the tsunami early warning system and RIMES in their national budgets. Once in the budget, these allocations, fortunately, are difficult to remove, experts said.
However, in a report this year, the U.N. education body UNESCO said that the long-term outlook for investment by national governments remained uncertain. Koltermann added that extra funds would be required for coordination to ensure national systems work as one network. There is a question mark over longer-term investment in these systems, beyond 10 or 20 years.
COMMUNITY PREPAREDNESS
The multi-hazard approach is also vital at the community level, said Debs Harris, resilience project manager for aid group World Vision in Asia Pacific.
"The kind of work we do in the communities would relate to whatever localised hazards there are. Tsunamis are not so common but earthquakes, floods and cyclones are," she said.
Preparing communities requires a much more difficult kind of investment that is not so easy to quantify, experts said.
"You can set up these systems and have all the technology but the lead time is so small (for tsunamis) that you need to have very well-established functional emergency management systems at the grassroots level that will allow people to evacuate in a matter of minutes,Â? said Bhupinder Tomar, senior officer for disaster preparedness at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
Â?These systems need to be tested every year, people need to be well-trained. This is a more difficult investment to make because it takes so much time and effort," Tomar added.
Experts also say it is important to incorporate disaster risk reduction in long-term development plans, whether this be through building codes and regulations, transport infrastructure or the location of crops.
Â?The key is to link tsunami preparedness with general development,Â? said Ilan Kelman, a senior research fellow at the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. Â?The challenge we always face is how to think ahead of a disaster and how to convince people to integrate events that donÂ?t happen very often ... into their daily lives.Â?
Kelman said countries had been trying to set up an Indian Ocean tsunami warning system for some 30 years but this only happened after almost 230,000 people died. All the plans had been there, but political will and donor support were missing. The key is to head off future problems before they happen, and incorporating the lessons of the past into countries' development is one way of doing this, he said.
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