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— Ramesh Babu

Making a point: The Union Minister for Science , Technology and Earth Science, Mr Kapil Sibal, with the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, during the inauguration of the National Tsunami Early Warning System Centre in Hyderabad on Monday.

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Hyderabad, Oct, 15 India is likely to become the first country in the world to acquire capabilities of predicting the likelihood of a tsunami in seven minutes after any major earthquake in Indian Ocean soon.

“Now, we have systems in place to predict the likelihood of tsunami within 30 minutes after a quake in Indian Ocean system. Efforts are on to bring this down to seven minutes,” Mr Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Science and Technology, said after dedicating the Tsunami Early Warning Centre set up at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) to the nation here on Monday.

As per the existing system, six Bottom Pressure Recorders (BPRs) installed in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea would collect data about the intensity of a quake which would be transmitted to the ground station for further analysis. “If we could analyse the data in BPRs themselves, possibly the time could be brought down to seven minutes and we will do it,” Mr Sibal explained.

The INCOIS, under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, would be expanded with the addition of two more dedicated centres for study of marine mechanisms and operational oceanography, he added.

The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, said the State Government would grant 10 acres of land for expansion of INCOIS campus.

Mr P.S. Goel, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, said six more BPRs would be installed in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea soon to increase the efficiency of the centre.

Mr Shailesh Nayak, Director, INCOIS, said the Early Warning Centre’s predictions proved to be correct and authentic in the case of a small tsunami wave in Indian Ocean on September 12, 2007.

The Early Warning Centre, set up at a cost of Rs 125 crore, receives real-time seismic data from the national seismic network of the India Meteorological Department and other international seismic networks. It detects all earthquake events of over six point magnitude occurring in the Indian Ocean while the BPRs confirm the triggering of a tsunami.

On the basis of this information, the centre would generate and disseminate timely advisories to the control room of the Ministry of Home Affairs for further dissemination to the public.

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