ENVIRONMENT | Protecting our natural resources
24 June 2008
U.S. Agencies Help Indonesia Build Tsunami Warning Capability
Indian Ocean nations have made much progress since tragic 2004 tsunami
Washington -- The island nation of Indonesia, the most tsunami-prone country on Earth, has added to its growing instrument network a second deep-ocean tsunami warning device provided by the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with funding from the U.S. State Department.
NOAA and the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta also have established the Indonesia Tsunami Early Warning System (Ina-TEWS) Public-Private Partnership, offering U.S. corporations doing business in Indonesia a chance to contribute financially or in other ways to the warning system.
Ambassador Cameron Hume of the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta and Said Jenie, chairman of Badan Pengkajian dan Penerapan Teknologi (BPPT) -- the Indonesian agency for the assessment and application of technology -- offered remarks June 10 at a ceremony held to launch the tsunameter into waters off the coasts of some of Indonesia’s nearly 18,000 islands.
“This deployment is a joint research and development program conducted by Indonesian and U.S. scientists and engineers,” Hume said. “Together we will evaluate the system to validate its performance in the Indian Ocean waters south of Bali.”
The NOAA deep-ocean assessment and reporting of tsunamis (DART) tsunameter is a next-generation, easy-to-deploy version that is less expensive to deploy than older versions and is designed to minimize vandalism, which has been a problem in the Indian Ocean region.
The tsunameter system is part of the broader Ina-TEWS and Indian Ocean tsunami warning and mitigation system. It is the second U.S. tsunameter system deployed in cooperation with Indonesia. (See “Second U.S. Tsunami-Detection System To Launch in Indian Ocean.”)
TSUNAMI DETECTION
The DART system provides real-time tsunami detection as waves travel across the open ocean. The stations consist of a bottom pressure sensor that is anchored to the seafloor and a companion moored buoy on the ocean surface. An acoustic link transmits data from the bottom pressure sensor to the surface buoy, and then satellite links relay the data to warning centers.
The State Department, Hume said, paid for engineering training and visits to the United States, and NOAA experts worked “side by side with BPPT engineers to transfer the DART technology as part of our agreement to cooperate in tsunami and natural disaster warning systems.”
The agreement between BPPT and NOAA, signed February 23 and based on a 2006 U.S.-Indonesia memorandum of understanding for scientific and technical cooperation, will help BPPT strengthen early-warning capacity for a range of hazards.
Indonesia will purchase another DART system from NOAA that will be deployed near the northeast cluster of islands, in the area of Halmahera. Much of the tsunami-detection effort has focused on Sumatra, where the Indian Ocean tsunami took a horrendous toll.
“Historically, there has been a high incidence of tsunamis in the northeast and around Sulawesi, and very little attention has been paid to that area,” said NOAA’s David McKinnie, who is serving as a science fellow at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta. “Our cooperation agreement is to extend Indonesia’s ability to warn all of its citizens, not just Sumatrans.”
CORPORATE PARTNERS
Under the public-private partnership established by the embassy and NOAA, U.S. corporations can make donations to the State Department to support the development of the Ina-TEWS.
Priorities for U.S. private-sector support include tsunameters; infrastructure for operations and maintenance; tsunami modeling, analysis and data management; communications and warning delivery networks; community preparedness; and advanced studies in ocean engineering and tsunamis.
The partnership will seek funds for up to 10 U.S. DART tsunameters to be deployed at eight stations, with two spares. A DART tsunameter costs about $350,000. Station operations and maintenance costs about $75,000 per year; parts, testing equipment and other operations and maintenance investments are also needed.
The funds will complement the hard work that Indonesia and other countries in the Indian Ocean region have accomplished since 2004. (See “Tsunami, Earthquake Detection Improved Since 2004 Disaster.”)
“Each of the countries in the region has established national tsunami warning centers and several countries have developed and are building tsunami warning systems with instrument arrays and analysis capacity,” McKinnie said.
“Given how complicated this problem is -- the business of issuing tsunami warnings -- and given the state of the infrastructure in the region on December 26, 2004,” McKinnie said, “there’s been tremendous progress in the countries developing national tsunami warning centers, educating populations, deploying instruments and working together as a region.”
NOAA’s Tsunami Portal may be accessed through the agency’s Web site.
