Regional Coordination

2010-05-23T20:29:26+00:00

The low-lying coastal zone is currently home to around 680 million people (nearly 10% of the 2010 global population), projected to reach more than one billion by 2050. SIDS are home to 65 million people. (Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC), 2020). In some of these low-lying coastal areas and SIDS the risk of tsunami is very high.

An Early Warning and Mitigation System (EWMS) has been implemented under IOC’s governance to increase resilience of coastal populations, in particular to tsunamis. It relies on multiscale coordination and is designed according to well-defined operational standards which are uniformly implemented across the broad range of activities and projects of the EWMS. As tsunamis may affect different regions of the world at the same time, strong regional cooperation is encouraged.

Tsunami risk is assessed by Tsunami Service Providers (TSP), whose main mission is to evaluate at basin level (Oceans, Seas) the risk of an impending tsunami, and issue information for Member States to take actions to protect life. It includes a dedicated and redundant round-the-clock monitoring of seismic and sea level indicators. TSPs work closely with local partners to warn citizens as quickly and effectively as possible of tsunami risks. The elder of the TSPs is the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) which was created in 1949 as a response to the 1946 tsunami generated in the Aleutian Islands that devastated Hilo, Hawaii.

At the national level, each Member State is responsible for issuing warnings to its own citizens through their National Tsunami Warning Centres (NTWC) or designated authorities. These warnings are based either on the NTWC’s own analysis of the situation, on the advisory messages received from TSPs (and some other sources), or on a combination of all.

In 2004, the Indian Ocean was hit by one of the deadliest earthquakes and tsunamis in historical times which caused the death of 230 000 people. In response to this tragic event, IOC received the mandate from the international community to coordinate the establishment of regional tsunami early warning systems in the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. This mandate was expressed in important meetings such as the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (Kobe, Japan, 2005) and the Phuket Ministerial Meeting on Regional Cooperation on Tsunami Early Warning Arrangements (Thailand, 2005). As a result, the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (ICG/IOTWS) , the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Tsunami Early Warning and Mitigation System in the North-eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean and Connected Seas (ICG/NEAMTWS) , and the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Tsunami and Other Coastal Hazards Warning System for the Caribbean and Adjacent Regions (ICG/CARIBE-EWS) were established.

Since then, initiatives requiring international and regional coordination, such as the Tsunami Ready Program and the Wave Exercises, have been implemented to contribute to significantly reduce human and material losses.

Tsunami Ready is an international community-based recognition pilot program created by the IOC UNESCO. It is unfolding in the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Caribbean Sea. The pilot program helps communities prepare for tsunamis by reaching a high level of resilience. The program includes drills and exercises, evacuation routes, hazard mapping and tsunami signalization as well as an investment on different scales, including international and national cooperation but strongly based on ownership by local authorities and population.

Regular regional situational exercises are important to prepare different actors for a future threat. Accurate reproduction on a human scale of a real crisis has enabled the carrying out of very effective awareness-raising campaigns on how to react in case of a tsunami. There are exercises in all regions, such as Caribe Wave, Pacific Wave, IOWave (Indian Ocean). In 2019, almost 800,000 participants were involved in the annual regional CARIBE WAVE tsunami exercise, which has become one of the most attended events on the UNESCO/IOC global calendar.

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Regional Coordination