POTSDAM, Germany, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Six years after the disastrous Christmas Day tsunami in 2004, a tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean has been completed, researchers say.
Researchers at the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences say the German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System will generate a warning no more than 5 minutes after a submarine earthquake, based on information from 300 stations built throughout Indonesia in the past six years, a GFZ release said Thursday.
The sensing stations include seismometers, GPS stations, tide gauges and buoy systems.
The project began immediately after the 2004 disaster when the government of Germany contracted the GFZ center to develop and implement an early warning system for tsunamis in the Indian Ocean, funded by $59 million from the aid-for-tsunami-victims pool.
After the current project ends March 31, 2011, Indonesia will assume the sole responsibility for operating the overall system.
