Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, has asked FOI for help with a disaster early warning system under the auspices of the Asian Tsunami Fund (ATF) set up in the wake of the flooding disaster in Thailand in 2004.

The largest donors to the Tsunami Fund are Sweden and Thailand and the ATF Board includes Matts Gustavsson from FOI as well as Sida. The Fund is administered by ESCAP, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.
The devastating tsunami in Thailand in 2004 and the cyclone in Burma in 2008 are just two examples of disasters that have hit Southeast Asia hard, partly due to the lack of effective early warning systems. Furthermore, the countries of the region have little experience and only a poor knowledge of measures that can shield the local community from the worst effects of natural disasters.

It is here that the Tsunami Fund will be helping. Since its establishment, the members have produced guidelines for the work that needs to be done, developed policies for the Fund and allocated funding to a number of projects in the area of disaster early warning.

“In 2004 certain Thai agencies had received warning of what was going on but they did not know what to do with this knowledge. That is why we have, for example, granted funds for the production of a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) which is a kind of template for the procedure to be followed at a disaster early warning centre in order to take the “correct” action and thereby minimise the effects of, for example, a tsunami,” says Matts Gustavsson, Head of Department for Defence and Security Systems at FOI.
The technology for warning that different kinds of natural disasters are imminent already exists, he says. On the other hand there is a need for systems to interpret the warning signals, to warn the public and to take the appropriate action both when disasters happen and for preventive and mitigation purposes.

Other applications that have been granted within the framework of the Tsunami Fund relate to measuring stations which measure changes in sea level and seismological stations capable of detecting earth tremors which can generate tsunamis.
But extreme flood waves – like those experienced in 2004 – seldom occur, perhaps as infrequently as once in two hundred years. To construct a warning system for tsunamis alone would therefore be unrealistic, thinks Matts, adding that the scope of the Tsunami Fund is now being widened as a result of this realisation. *

“Irrespective of which kind of natural disaster we are talking about, warning systems must be incorporated in other systems if they are to be both economically defensible and effective. Besides, we want to take into account how changes in climate affect natural phenomena and natural disasters, and this ambition will probably be reflected in the renaming of the Fund as a “multi-hazard” fund.

On a visit to Burma, Tsunami Fund representatives met representatives of a number of local organisations and authorities. The purpose of the visit was to clarify the need for a warning system in order to be able to support Burma in the build-up of its own capacity, so that the country would itself be able to develop plans for disaster management at both local and central levels.

FOI’s Matts Gustavsson is shown fifth from the left. Also pictured are representatives of Burma’s Department of Meteorology and Hydrology (DMH), the equivalent of SMHI in Sweden, and a number of other Burmese authorities.