The Hindu Business Line : Tsunami warning system to be installed by 2007

THE Government will install the equipment required for predicting tsunamis within the next two-and-a-half years. The project is expected to cost about Rs 100 crore - Rs 125 crore.

The indigenous warning system includes putting in place a Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting system, around 20 data buoys and a software programme that would help predict the location, time and height of any tidal formations like tsunamis based on the changes and disturbances detected underwater following seismic changes.

Informing this, the Minister of State for Science and Technology and Ocean Development, Mr Kapil Sibal, said that India would also approach the Pacific Tsunami warning centre and countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar for required international co-operation in its proposed software programme for the networking of the available data on tsunami and deep water oceanic changes.

Moreover, 12 more acoustic tidal gauges were being installed to help detect the tidal changes.

The system, to be placed at a depth of six km in the Indian Ocean, would be able to detect even one centimetre rise in water height.

Admitting that the country was not technologically prepared to detect the formation and movement of tsunamis, he said, "Even if we had subscribed to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre it would not have helped us, as the centre collected data on disturbances in the Pacific Ocean and not the Indian Ocean."

On the rehabilitation works undertaken by his Ministry, he said `Sagar Kanya' — the research ship of the Department of Ocean Development — was being sent to Andaman and Nicobar to collect information regarding land displacement in the islands due to the tsunami and the quake.

The Ministry has also decided to set up small hutments for the affected families in the tsunami-hit coastal areas for which the State Governments concerned have already been requested to allot land.

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