Tsunami warning centre should be global hub: Deshmukh

Union minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Vilasrao Deshmukh today asked the city-based Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (Incois) to focus on developing the tsunami warning centre on its campus into a global one.

Union minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Vilasrao Deshmukh on Monday asked the city-based Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (Incois) to focus on developing the tsunami warning centre on its campus into a global one.

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"The future work should be focused on expanding our operations to become a global centre in answering the accuracies of real-time tsunami modelling and improving the resilience of coastal communities through capacity building programmes," Deshmukh said after inspecting the National Tsunami Warning Centre (NTWC) at Incois this afternoon.

The minister, who was here to inaugurate the ground station of Oceansat-2, toured the centre and enquired about its facilities.

"This is one of the best tsunami warning centres in the world which is providing timely and accurate tsunami advisories. The accuracy of advisories is on par or even better than other global centres and our system has now expanded its services to all Indian Ocean rim countries. We are now well prepared to receive warning in a few minutes and save precious lives," he said.

Deshmukh said the coastal vulnerability index, atlas, multi-hazard and 3D maps generated by Incois would find enormous use in planning of coastal infrastructure and disaster mitigation.

Services on coral reef health bulletin and red tide monitoring were also extremely useful in coastal and marine resources management, he said.