As indicated by specialists from the Indian National Center for Ocean Information System (INCOIS), India is a lot more secure against tsunami than it was in 2004. This is due to the foundation of state-of-the-art Tsunami Early Warning System (ITEWS) at INCOIS, Hyderabad in 2007.
ITEWS is a combined effort of various organizations comprising, the Department of Space (DOS), Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Survey of India (SOI) and National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT). It comprises a real-time system of seismic stations, tide gauges and a 24×7 operational tsunami warning centre to recognize tsunamigenic earthquakes, to monitor tsunamis and to deliver timely warning to vulnerable communities.
Scientists in India can identify large undersea earthquakes in Indian Ocean in real-time and generate a tsunami alert in 10-20 minutes after the earthquake occurs. India didn’t have any tsunami warning facility nor any public knowledge of tsunamis in the Indian Ocean till 2004. India is counted among the first few centres to come up with a quantitative tsunami forecast.
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO accredited Indian Tsunami Early Warning Centre (ITEWC) as Tsunami Service Provider (TSP) for 28 Indian Ocean Rim (IOR) countries, along with Indonesia and Australia in 2011, for generating regional warnings.
The focus in current times has been on reinforcing community awareness and feedback using diverse capacity building activities, biennial Indian Ocean wide tsunami drills and piloting of the UNESCO-IOC Tsunami Ready initiative. Tsunami Ready is a community performance-based programme to advocate tsunami alertness through active collaboration of public, community leaders, and national and local emergency management agencies. The main goal of this programme is to enable coastal community’s alertness for tsunami emergencies, minimize the loss of life and property and establish a structural and systematic approach in building community preparedness through fulfilling the best-practice indicators.
Two villages of Odisha- Venkatraipur in Ganjam district and Noliasahi in Jagatsinghpur district are now ‘Tsunami Ready’.
Currently, INCOIS is establishing a network of 35 stations to estimate the tectonic plate’s movements in real-time and measure the vertical displacements under the sea directly.
