Hyderabad: The Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth 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.<!--more--> 

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.
—iGovernment Bureau