INCOIS conducts mock drill on Tsunami warnings

Hyderabad, Sept 7 (INN): Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (ESSO-INCOIS) conducted a Mock Drill on Tsunami Warnings in a grand manner at its office in Pragati nagar in Hyderabad on Wednesday.

Addressing a press conference later, INCOIS Director Satheesh Shenai said that the Mock Drill exercise organized under auspices of UNESCO's Inter-governmental Oceanographic Commission is called as 'IOWave16'. Tsunami Early Warning Centre (ITEWC) is providing several special services such as Tsunami Warnings (which serves 27 countries in the Indian Ocean), Ocean State forecasts and High wave alerts for coastal residents and seafarers, Coral bleaching alerts for environmental monitoring etc.,

Most of the Coastal States/UTs are participating in IOWave16 Tsunami mock drill. Almost 33 Coastal Districts of 8 States/UT are participating up to community level, Community level evacuations will be carried out in around 350 villages, around 40,000 people to be evacuated during the drill he added.

Head of the Advisory services Group INCOIS and Indian Tsunami Early warning center (ITEWC) Srinivas Kumar briefed about the ITEWC. The ITEWC encompasses a real-time seismic monitoring network of 17 broadband seismic stations to detect tsunamigenic earthquakes, a network of real-time sea-level sensors with 4 Bottom Pressure Recorders (BPR) in the open ocean and 25 tide gauge stations at different coastal locations monitor tsunamis and a 24 X 7 operational tsunami warning centre to provide timely advisories to vulnerable community. The state-of-the-art early warning centre at INCOIS - ESSO is operational since October 15, 2007 with all the necessary computational and communication infrastructure that enables reception of real-time data from seismic and sea-level sensors, analysis of the data, tsunami modeling, and dissemination of tsunami advisories guided by a comprehensive Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).

A host of all available communication technology options have been employed for timely dissemination of advisories to various designated authorities to deal with effective emergency response actions as appropriate. The centre is capable of detecting tsunamigenic earthquakes occurring in the whole of Indian Ocean region as well as in the Global Oceans within 10 minutes of their occurrence and disseminates the advisories to the concerned authorities within 20 minutes through various modes of communication like email, fax, SMS, GTS and website. Up-gradation of ITEWC will also enhance its capability to provide tsunami advisories to the other needy countries in the world.

The INCOIS Director said that media plays a vital role for disseminating the information in Tsunami warning system. Media can easily raise awareness in people through their respected mediums, like TV, Radio, News paper, Social media channels. Through all this public can understand the severity of the tsunami and earthquakes.

He complimented the media for playing the role of an "early warning system" during the tsunami disaster. He also said that it was the press which had first captured the world attention to the disaster and that prompted the local administration and the government to act quickly. Media is the one of the best early warning systems which helps in acute crisis.