INDIAN OCEAN: Plans for tsunami warning system advancing well, ISDR

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

JOHANNESBURG, 18 Apr 2005 (IRIN) - Plans for a tsunami early warning system in the Indian Ocean are at an advanced stage, UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) Director Salvano Briceno told IRIN on Monday.

Following a meeting of experts in Mauritius, Briceno said efforts to establish a tsunami early warning system were "going well", and although the pace of developments around the issue was "not yet ideal, there was a recognition by donors [attending the conference] that this was an important effort that they needed to support".

Briceno noted that the plan for setting up the early warning system "was not yet finalised ... the purpose [of the Mauritius meeting] was to advance on the development of a regional system, that should be adopted in Paris in June".

"Once the system is adopted by governments, the installation of equipment at regional and national level can begin. That will continue for at least a year, and we expect that the full system will be in place by earliest June next year," he added.

Donors had already made pledges for setting up the system, but it was still too early to give accurate figures for funding received and expected. "Today [Monday] is the first working day for governments back from Mauritius and they may be making pledges from today and tomorrow," Briceno said.

The Second International Coordination Meeting for the Development of an Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System ended on Saturday and focused mainly on the technical aspects of setting up the system.

"In terms of the technical part of it, things are pretty much straightforward - we need sensors in the deep ocean or near the coast of some countries, and then at national level it will depend on each country - some systems just need to be upgraded [while in other cases new systems] must be installed. The difficulties lay in identifying the regional centres for coordinating work in the [Indian Ocean], and that is more a political decision," Briceno noted.

He added that "negotiations would be needed, regarding what role each regional centre will play", and in which countries centres are to be located.

India, Indonesia, Thailand and Australia all wanted to play a key role in "providing that coordination mechanism ... and we don't expect that to be finalised before the end of the year".

"From the UN side we are promoting the idea of providing each regional centre with some function - for example, one will focus on transmission of data, another on research, another on training - so that each centre plays a key role, and the system will be based on several centres rather than just one. India, Indonesia, Thailand and Australia all have good capacity," Briceno pointed out.

Smaller, poorer nations, such as the Seychelles, Maldives and countries on the African coastline, would need additional support to get their national systems up and running.

"Those countries have national capacity development needs that must be taken into account as part of the whole [tsunami early warning] system," he commented.

UN bodies, like the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN Development Programme and the ISDR, "have plans to support these national disaster management capacities", Briceno concluded.

[ENDS]