Hyderabad, October 15
Nearly 400 million persons living in coastal areas of the country will feel more assured about their safety as the government has put in place a state-of-the-art national tsunami warning system to provide timely advisories.

The system, set up at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad, can tell within 13 minutes of occurrence of an earthquake in the Indian Ocean whether it will lead to a tsunami.

The warning system comprises a network of seismic stations, bottom pressure recorders and tide gauges to detect tsunamigenic earthquakes and monitor tsunamis. The bottom pressure recorders installed in the ocean are the key sensors to confirm the triggering of a tsunami. Four recorders have been installed in the Bay of Bengal and the two in the Arabian Sea. In addition, 30 tide gauges have been installed to monitor the progress of tsunami waves.

Science and technology minister Kapil Sibal, who inaugurated the tsunami warning centre here today, said: “The centre is a technological achievement of enormous magnitude.”

Built at a cost of Rs 125 crore within the declared time frame, the centre has been set up in collaboration with several agencies, including the department of science and technology and the department of space and the CSIR.

Stressing upon the need of constant improvements, Sibal said the scientists should look at bringing down the time of detecting tsunami by further streamlining the process of data flow.

“We should see if we can reduce the time to six or seven minutes,” he said.