New Tsunami Warning System

The Minister of State for Planning, Science & Technology and Earth Sciences Dr Ashwani Kumar informed Rajya Sabha today that New state of the art Tsunami Warning Centre is already commissioned and made fully operational since 2007 in 24X7 mode.

The Minister said that the Indian tsunami early warning centre (ITEWC) is equipped with world-class computational, communication and technical support facilities and is considered as one of the most modern tsunami warning centres as on date. The instrumentation of the ITEWC is built in a way to detect tsunamis originating from both identified tsunamigenic sources in the Indian Ocean and to become world class in respect of the quality of the warning service with minimal false alarm scenario generation possibility. Through critical monitoring and performance evaluation of the services provided by the ITEWC over the Indian Ocean, the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigations System (ICG/IOTWS) of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Economic Social and Cultural Organization (IOC/UNESCO) has given a status of Regional Tsunami Service Provider (RTSP) to ITEWC.

Dr. Kumar added that Starting from July 2008, India has been providing IOC benchmarked Level-1 tsunami regional service. Subsequently, from May 2011, India started rendering Level-2 tsunami regional service on trial basis to the entire Indian Ocean rim countries. After the completion of the Indian Ocean Tsunami drill carried out on 12th October, 2011, India has started providing the tsunami warning service bulletins to the 26 Indian Ocean Rim Countries on an operational basis. The performance of the ITEWC has been subjected for continuous scrutiny by an RTSP Task Team duly constituted by the ICG/IOTWS.

The Minister said that grants of Rs.10.56crores during 2009-10, Rs.10.0crores in 2010-11 and Rs. 13.0crores are utilised during 2011-12.

He said that the performance of the integrated ITEWC has been fully satisfactory and it has almost reduced the possibilities of false alarms of tsunami generation which has been the uniqueness of its design and development.

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