Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Data collection was undertaken in August - December 2013. The primary data
came from face-to-face interviews with the Acting Director of National Disaster
Warning Center (NDWC), Ministry of Information and Communication Technology
(MICT); and the Director of the Seismological Bureau, Thai Meteorological
Department (TMD-MICT) in September 2013. The interviews were all undertaken
following a semi-structured style complemented with observation from a warning
drill by the NDWC.
8.3
The Tsunami Warning System in Thailand
8.3.1
Organizational Development
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami disaster was a trigger for the devel-
opment of early warning systems in many countries in the Indian Ocean region,
especially Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Thailand (Thomalla and
Larsen 2010 ).
As part of the broader support from the United States government (USA) for
the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System (IOTW), the NDWC in Thailand
received a grant from the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA). This
grant was used primarily for technical assistance from the Pacifi c Disaster
Center (PDC) and partners in disaster management and the warning capabilities
of the system. Vulnerability reduction programs have been implemented in
Thailand including mitigation plans such as “Risk Assessment and Vulnerability
Analysis”, “Land Use Planning”, and “Enrichment of Beach Forests and
Rehabilitation of Coral Reefs and Sea Grass Beds”, and preparedness plans
including “Installation of Warning System”, “Development of Education
Programmes”, “Raising Awareness”, “Organizing Evacuation Drills”,
“Construction of Tsunami Memorial”, and “Disaster-related Research”
(Thanawood et al. 2004 ).
8.3.2
Information Sources
The information and experiences used for the establishment of the disaster warn-
ing system in Thailand consisted of domestic as well as foreign/international
sources as shown in Table 8.1 . In addition three Deep-ocean Assessment and
Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) buoys have been deployed (N9 E89, N9.30
E95.42, and N7.30 E96.10) complementing the data. The fi rst of these buoys was
deployed in 2006 while the others in 2010. The performance of the fi rst DART
buoy was observed throughout the recordings of the tsunami in 2007 (Lorito
et al. 2008 ).
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