How the 2004 tsunami changed early warning systems

However, in the past 20 years, a lot has been done to tackle the situation. There are numerous early warning systems in the region now, and their capabilities have been drastically improved. With just one day’s notice, these systems can reduce damages by a staggering 30%, according to a report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Here is a look at how the 2004 tsunami changed early warning systems.

Push for more early warning systems

Soon after the disaster struck, the United Nations took the initiative of improving preparedness across vulnerable countries such as Indonesia. Today, there are international centres and countries which round the clock monitor earthquakes across the globe.

“There are now around 150 stations in the global network. Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis or DART buoys track changes in pressure on the seafloor to see if a tsunami has been generated,” according to the EuroNews report.

The report added there are 75 of these buoys situated across every ocean. The number of sea level monitoring stations has also increased — it has gone up from one in 2004 to 14,000 now.

Better technology

There have been a number of technological improvements as well. For instance, early warning systems now have better algorithms which have helped transmit information much more quickly. Faster supercomputers have led to rapid modelling.

Laura Kong, director of the International Tsunami Information Center in Honolulu, US, told Euronews, “In 2003…it took us about 15 to 20 minutes, perhaps up to 50 minutes, to actually know there was an earthquake and know there was a tsunami generated…Now… we’re down to about five to seven minutes. So that gain of about 10 or 20 minutes has been a game-changer. It has allowed us to actually provide warnings before the wave arrives.”

More needs to be done

Although nations like Indonesia have deployed more and better early warning systems to reduce the impact of natural disasters, there are still more than half the countries of the world which do not have effective early warning systems even for routine events such as rainfall or cyclones.

These countries are mostly developing nations where the impact of natural disasters is disproportionately high — “climate-related disasters cause fifteen times more deaths compared to other parts of the world,” according to the UN.