IOC/UNESCO to co-organise a special session for the World Tsunami Awareness Day during the upcoming Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction

The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, along with UNISDR and Government of Japan will be co-organising a Special Session for the World Tsunami Awareness Day during the Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR) scheduled to be held in New Delhi, India during November 2-5, 2016. Details of AMCDRR are available at http://www.amcdrrindia.net/ . Designation of November 5th by the United Nations General Assembly as the World Tsunami Awareness Day has provided a great means of raising public awareness of the risk caused by tsunamis.

While Tsunami Early Warning Systems have been improving over the past several years, precious human lives continue to be at risk due to the fact that vulnerable coastal communities, especially those in the near source regions, are not fully aware and prepared well enough to respond to such low-frequency, high-impact disasters. IOC/UNESCO has been coordinating the establishment of Tsunami Warning Systems in all the ocean basins through the intergovernmental coordination groups in the Caribbean, Indian, North East Atlantic and Mediterranean and Pacific Ocean basins. In the recent years, there has been renewed focus on enhancing community awareness and response mechanisms by regular conduct of ocean-wide tsunami drills.

The latest such drill named IOWave16 was conducted under the auspices of IOC/UNESCO during September 07-08, 2016 wherein 24 countries bordering the Indian Ocean participated. 13 countries took the drill down to the community level and evacuated about 50000 participants. Photographs and videos of Exercise IOWave16 are available at iowave16.org. While the drill has been successful in raising public awareness, lessons learnt from the drill collated through structured evaluation forms and observers will be useful in identifying the gaps in the system and improve them. UNISDR has deputed two observers in Seychelles and India during the IOWave16.

This special technical session will provide an opportunity for experts to deliberate on the progress made in tsunami warning systems in the past decade and discuss the lessons learnt from the recent IOWave16. This session is expected to contribute to enhancement of tsunami awareness and also to the recommendations of the high-level AMCDRR.