Performance of the Indian tsunami early warning system

Abstract

The Indian Tsunami Early Warning System (ITEWS) based at Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad is responsible for issuing tsunami advisories to authorized officials from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) in India. The centre operates on 24x7 basis and has the functions of monitoring seismological stations, Bottom Pressure Recorders (BPRs) and tidal stations throughout the Indian Ocean Basin to evaluate potentially tsunamigenic earthquakes and disseminating tsunami warning information. A database of all possible earthquake scenarios for the Indian Ocean is used to identify the regions under risk at the time of event. Timely tsunami advisories (Warning/Alert/Watch/Information) are generated following pre-set decision support rules and Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). The end-to-end system performance was very well tested for the first time after its establishment against the earthquake and tsunami event on September 12, 2007 Off the west coast of Sumatra. The Indian system equipped with world-class computational, communication and technical support facility is capable of detecting tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. With this capability INCOIS has begun providing regional tsunami watch services on a trial basis from its national system for the Indian Ocean region.