V. Case Study Part I – Rationale and Overview
V.2 A Tsunami Early Warning System for Indonesia – A Response to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami
V.2.1 Response to Tsunami Threat in Indonesia
Tsunamis pose a tremendous threat to societies. Their destructive power has been well shown in the past 30 years. Worldwide, nearly 250.000 people have been killed, of which Indonesia shares the largest amount (Emdat, 20136). Since the early 19th century, earthquakes in Indonesia unleashed around 100 tsunamis (BNBP7 and Hidayati 2012), amongst them the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that left in its wake more than 170,000 casualties and 500,000 displaced people. Frequent earthquakes and tsunamis followed.
Although, on average, every three years small and medium size tsunamis occur in the Indonesian archipelago and a large and growing proportion of Indonesian citizens live exposed to tsunamis (Latief Hamza et al. 2000). It has been estimated that approximately 4.35 million Indonesians live in tsunami exposed areas (Post et al. 2009). Achieving long term exposure reduction by means of retreat (resettlement) is the less favourable R&V-R-component to be selected. In fact, although the number of exposed Indonesians is very high the low probabilities of tsunamis occurring in certain specific localities along the Indonesian coastline (all the tsunamis occurred so far have impacted different locations), do not justify to remove, for example, large coastal cities even if they are located in zones potentially exposed to coastal tsunamis.
A more reasonable and adequate R&V-R-component decided upon by the Indonesian government was the establishment of a Tsunami Early Warning System (TEWS) in order to at least reduce the mortality risks of tsunami events. Indeed, Early Warning Systems (EWS) play a key role for reducing mortality risk. “If an effective tsunami early warning system had been in place in the Indian Ocean region, thousands of lives could have been saved” (UNISDR-PPEW).
6 EM-DAT: The International Disaster Database, available at http://www.emdat.be/ (accessed 18.8.2013)
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For example, in Bangladesh the establishment of a cyclone warning system reduced the amount of cyclone victims in the period 1970-2007 from half a million to a few thousands8.
A consortium of German research institutions under the leadership of the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ) proposed to the German government the installation of a Tsunami Early Warning System in Indonesia. In March 2005, the governments of Germany and Indonesia signed a joint declaration to collaborate for the establishment of such a system. The cooperation included the development of a Tsunami Decision Support System as well as technical developing national and local capacities to disseminate warnings and to adequately respond to them Rudloff et al. 2009; Lauterjung et al. 2010b; Lauterjung et al. 2010a; Hanka et al. 2010; Roessler et al. 2010; Boebel et al. 2010; Gayer et al. 2010; H. Spahn et al. 2010; Denis Chang Seng 2010).
V.2.2 People Centred and End-to-End Warning Systems
In 2006, a global survey of early warning systems found that while some warning systems were well advanced, there were many gaps and shortcomings, especially in developing countries and in terms of effectively reaching and serving the needs of those at risk. In 2007, many countries reported good progress in developing early warning systems. However, the reports submitted also showed gaps between the development of regional and national hazard warning capacities and the development of effective local capacities to receive and use early warnings to save lives (UNISDR-PPEW). This observation applies very well to the case of Indonesia.
Although Indonesia had received a tsunami warning from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre on 26th December 2004 and in May 2007, why was it not passed on to the local communities through the Indonesian authorities? It became evident that the national authorities were lacking adequate institutionalized mechanisms to handle warnings received from the international community. Moreover, local communities were not prepared to respond to warnings.
8 British Red Cross: Early warning saves lives, 2009, Available at: http://www.redcross.org.uk/news.asp?id=95271 (17.12.2009)
Therefore, the German contribution to the Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (InaTEWS) was not only designed to provide the technology to detect tsunami events in due time but also to support the development of an InaTEWS ensuring that warnings reach communities exposed and that these communities know how to respond adequately to them.
Putting more emphasis on efficient response capabilities has been promoted by UN/ISDR and been identified as one of the priorities of the Hyogo Framework for Action (UNISDR 2005).
V.2.3 R&V-A for Establishing an Efficient Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System
For the development of knowledge-based response capabilities of organizations and the identification of population vulnerability, R&V-A plays a key role. Hence, one Working Package of the German-Indonesian research and development project has been dedicated to R&V-A.
The research aimed at developing R&V-A products that support the development of effective response structures. Hence, the case study presented in this chapter is the result of the efforts made by the German science community to contribute to the establishment of InaTEWS. The entire assessment process has been accompanied by the involvement of a range of stakeholders as proposed by (Renn 2008). Throughout the entire assessment process five multi-stakeholder workshops were held funded and organized by the GITEWS project, conceptualized and implemented to large parts by the author of this dissertation. The workshop participants were members of the “Joint German-Indonesian Working Group on R&V-A” on behalf of the scientific community, as well as representatives from national and local authorities and from local NGOs.
Disclaimer
At this stage of the dissertation it shall be stated that the case study has been elaborated based on the applied research conducted within the framework of the German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) Working Package on R&V-A (WP4) that included many German and Indonesian partners. The conceptualization of the case study is intellectual property of the author of this dissertation, whereas the empirical work and its methodological foundation presented in this chapter includes research from my dearest colleagues Joachim Post (DLR), Matthias Mueck (DLR), Stephanie Wegscheider (DLR), and Kai Zoesseder (DLR). Where appropriate, more reference to the sources of the empirical work will be provided.