As part of the U.S. effort, in December 2006, NOAA experts and Thai government officials put a deep-ocean assessment and reporting of tsunamis (DART) station in the Indian Ocean, halfway between Thailand and Sri Lanka. (See related article.)DART systems provide real-time tsunami detection as waves travel across open waters, and each station is linked to a satellite for real-time data transmission on global networks.

In September, under an agreement with the Indonesian government, NOAA will put a DART tsunameter at 0 degrees north, 89 degrees east, near Sumatra, and Indonesia will maintain the device. The U.S. State Department is providing nearly $1 million for DART training there.

But DARTs are only part of an all-hazards warning system. A complete end-to-end system includes tide gauges, communications systems, inundation (flooding) modeling, warning dissemination systems, and especially outreach and education to local communities — what experts call “the last kilometer” — about what to do in an emergency.

On the ocean side of the U.S. effort, NOAA, with WMO, outlined a detailed architecture for regional and national warning systems, and plans regional and national workshops in September and October.

NOAA upgraded six coastal sea-level gauges in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Maldives and contributed seven more gauges. The stations, which are integrated into the Global Sea-Level Observing System network, transmit data at one-minute intervals via satellite.

NOAA also upgraded Global Telecommunication System connections for the Maldives and Sri Lanka, helping those nations share critical data with other Indian Ocean countries and NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) and receive such data from them.

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The ocean between Sri Lanka and Thailand now has one. It is up to us to make sure that the warning that get communicated from international and regional warning centers will be communciated to the affected communities promptly and that those communities will be prepared to respond properly.

NOAA Provides First Tsunami Detection Buoy for the Indian Ocean: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance

Following a ceremony in Phuket, Thailand, where the 2004 Boxing Day event caused the most extensive tsunami damage in Thailand, the MV SEAFDEC set sail today to deploy the buoy about mid-way between Thailand and Sri Lanka. NOAA scientists and engineers are onboard to provide technical assistance during the launch operations.With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), NOAA built and provided the DART station on behalf of the U.S. government. The buoy will be maintained by the Thai Meteorological Department and National Disaster Warning Center. The station’s data will be available to all nations through the World Meteorological Organization Global Telecommunications System and will be part of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems.

The Thai buoy is the first of 22 tsunameters planned for the Indian Ocean’s regional tsunami warning system. NOAA will provide a second DART buoy further to the south in the spring of 2007. This is part of an end-to-end warning system that includes tide gauges, communications upgrades, modeling, and dissemination systems for five countries — Indonesia, India, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

NOAA’s National Weather Service will conduct a limited communications test of the Tsunami Warning System in the coastal areas of California, Oregon, and Washington on Wednesday, September 13, between 10:45 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

Complete Announcement

NEW STUDY CONFIRMS LOW TSUNAMI RISK AT PEARL HARBOR

“The study shows that none of the historic tsunamis, nor any of the 18 modeled scenario events – based on magnitude 9.3 earthquakes – caused inundation at the proposed location of the NOAA facility,” said Eddie Bernard, director of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environment Lab, which operates the research center. “The models indicate that the greatest rise in water levels at Ford Island would be less than five feet above mean high water level. The NOAA building site is located at 10 feet above mean high water level.”

Full Storey

My presentation was Expanding Access to ICTs (Powerpoint)

Along with Bill Melody’s forceful comments it clearly established the importance of market and regulatory reforms, a position that may otherwise have been deemphasized as a result of the Chair’s interest in subsidies.

The visit was also used to pursue the disaster warning-communication issues that have come to the fore in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. On the 18th of January I visited the Big Island’s Civil Defense Emergency Operations Center and the Pacific Tsunami Museum accompanied by Bill Melody and at the invitation of Dr George Curtis, a tsunami expert at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo. On the following day, Peter Anderson, the expert we had recruited for the disaster warning work in Sri Lanka, and I visited the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center at Ewa Beach, Oahu. The information gathered in these visits was written up as “Surviving tsunamis: Lessons we can learn from Hawai’i.” I am not attaching this article at this time because I hope to get it published in Sinhala and English in Sri Lanka shortly. This article has been circulated to contacts in tsunami-hit countries in the region as the first step in broadening the disaster warning-communication work.

On the 19th I made a plenary presentation (posted on website previously), “What happened in Sri Lanka and why it won’t be as bad next time.” I was one of four speakers at the closing plenary of the PTC 05 conference. The plenary was well attended. I established useful relations with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a result of the plenary and the related contacts.

The PTC event itself did not live up to (possibly unrealistic) expectations. It had lost a lot of the government, academic and first-tier telco participation that it had back in 1990 when I last attended. There was a dearth of significant fund-raising or academic collaboration opportunities as a result. However, signaling the presence of LIRNEasia as a player in the Asia Pacific and the contacts related to the disaster warning-communication work made the trip worthwhile.