Pakistan setting up earthquake and tsunami warning system
Pakistan is setting up an earthquake detection and tsunami early warning system supported by UNESCO and its Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC).
Installed at Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) centres in Karachi and Islamabad, the system can issue information on seismic activity within five minutes of its occurrence. Besides providing early warnings of land-based earthquakes to civil defence authorities, the system enables the national tsunami warning centre at PMD to send out speedy tsunami alerts for the Pakistani coastline.
The system is based on a sophisticated software package called "SeisComP3", originally developed for Indonesia by Geoforschungszentrum (GFZ) Potsdam. UNESCO/IOC provided both hard- and software for the system as well as training for staff. In preparation is a cooperation agreement with GFZ Potsdam, to make Pakistani broad-band seismometers part of the internationally accessible seismic network of the Indian Ocean region. Pakistan will thus, through real-time data sharing, contribute significantly to the effort led by UNESCO/IOC to establish an Indian Ocean tsunami warning system.
Pakistan suffered a partcularly devastating earthquake in October 2005, which killed over 80,000 people.