Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Long-Term Reliability and
Sustainability of
Warning Center Operations
SUMMARY
This chapter evaluates long-term prospects of the two Tsunami Warning Centers (TWCs) to
providing reliable and internally consistent tsunami detection, decision support, and product
generation, and for effectively supporting threat detection, warning management, and public
response. The goal of the current geographically distributed organization of the TWCs (i.e., a
center each in Hawaii and Alaska) with distinct areas of responsibility (AORs) is to provide the
system with back-up in the case of critical failure at the other center. However, the two TWC
technology suites differ considerably from each other, and those differences lead to techno-
logical incompatibilities and limited capabilities for back-up, redundancy, and checks and bal-
ances, which are important mission capabilities for the tsunami warning system.
In addition, as discussed in detail in Chapter 3, inconsistencies in warning products issued
by the two TWCs and the current division of AOR results in messages that have caused confu-
sion and the potential to cause confusion in the future, making the products less effective in
eliciting the appropriate response. The committee recommends that the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) National Weather Service (NWS) develop tsunami
warning system products that relect best practices, as well as lessons learned from other
operational real-time, large-scale, mission-critical distributed systems, and that comply with
international information technology and software engineering product and process stan-
dards. In addition, the committee recommends that the TWCs undertake an external review by
information technology (IT) specialists in the area of communication technology for the latest
technology in message composition software and formats to ensure compatibility with current
and next generation information and communication technology (web and cell-phone) for
message dissemination.
Because the centers are under different management, use different analytical software
and hardware, and appear to have distinct organizational cultures, the committee concludes
that they do not function as redundant systems. The committee discuses several options for
alternative organizational structures including operational convergence of the two centers,
merging the two centers into a single center, and/or co-locating center(s) with other research
or operational units and recommends that the decision to develop an organizational structure
