Abstract
Abstract. The Mw = 9.3 Sumatra earthquake of 26 December 2004 generated a tsunami that affected the entire Indian Ocean region and caused approximately 230 000 fatalities. In the response to this tragedy the German government funded the German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) Project. The task of the GEOFON group of GFZ Potsdam was to develop and implement the seismological component. In this paper we describe the concept of the GITEWS earthquake monitoring system and report on its present status. The major challenge for earthquake monitoring within a tsunami warning system is to deliver rapid information about location, depth, size and possibly other source parameters. This is particularly true for coast lines adjacent to the potential source areas such as the Sunda trench where these parameters are required within a few minutes after the event in order to be able to warn the population before the potential tsunami hits the neighbouring coastal areas. Therefore, the key for a seismic monitoring system with short warning times adequate for Indonesia is a dense real-time seismic network across Indonesia with densifications close to the Sunda trench. A substantial number of supplementary stations in other Indian Ocean rim countries are added to strengthen the teleseismic monitoring capabilities. The installation of the new GITEWS seismic network – consisting of 31 combined broadband and strong motion stations – out of these 21 stations in Indonesia – is almost completed. The real-time data collection is using a private VSAT communication system with hubs in Jakarta and Vienna. In addition, all available seismic real-time data from the other seismic networks in Indonesia and other Indian Ocean rim countries are acquired also directly by VSAT or by Internet at the Indonesian Tsunami Warning Centre in Jakarta and the resulting "virtual" network of more than 230 stations can jointly be used for seismic data processing. The seismological processing software as part of the GITEWS tsunami control centre is an enhanced version of the widely used SeisComP software and the well established GEOFON earthquake information system operated at GFZ in Potsdam (http://geofon.gfz-potsdam.de/db/eqinfo.php). This recently developed software package (SeisComP3) is reliable, fast and can provide fully automatic earthquake location and magnitude estimates. It uses innovative visualization tools, offers the possibility for manual correction and re-calculation, flexible configuration, support for distributed processing and data and parameter exchange with external monitoring systems. SeisComP3 is not only used for tsunami warning in Indonesia but also in most other Tsunami Warning Centres in the Indian Ocean and Euro-Med regions and in many seismic services worldwide.
Highlights
1.1 The great Andaman earthquakeThe tsunami tragedy following the great Mw = 9.3 Andaman earthquake of 26 December 2004 (Stein and Okal, 2005) prompted a great effort to establish tsunami warning systems for the Indian Ocean rim countries
It changed dramatically the scope of the GEOFON programme of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences as it took on the task to design and implement the land based seismic component of the GermanIndonesian Tsunami Warning System (GITEWS, Rudloff et al, 2009) as central part of the Indonesian Tsunami Warning System InaTEWS
Success in tsunami early warning for Indonesia will benefit the other Indian Ocean rim countries within the IOTWS (Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System, coordinated by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, IOC) as relevant information about ocean-wide tsunami obtained in Indonesia may be timely distributed to the other potentially affected countries
Summary
The tsunami tragedy following the great Mw = 9.3 Andaman earthquake of 26 December 2004 (Stein and Okal, 2005) prompted a great effort to establish tsunami warning systems for the Indian Ocean rim countries It changed dramatically the scope of the GEOFON programme (http: //geofon.gfz-potsdam.de) of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences as it took on the task to design and implement the land based seismic component of the GermanIndonesian Tsunami Warning System (GITEWS, Rudloff et al, 2009) as central part of the Indonesian Tsunami Warning System InaTEWS. Tsunami watch or warning bulletins should be issued preferably within 5 min in order to be able to initiate timely civil protection measures These bulletins will initially be based primarily on rapidly determined earthquake parameters and on selected pre-calculated tsunami scenarios which fit the initial seismic parameters (Behrens et al, 2010). As an extension of the GITEWS project, the GFZ brings in its expertise and achievements from the Indian Ocean to this undertaking (Hanka and Lauterjung, 2009)
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