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Past IOWave Exercises

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Past IOWave Exercises

Indian Ocean Wave 11

At the 8th Session of the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (ICG/IOTWS-VIII) held in Melbourne, Australia, 3 – 6 May 2011, the ICG decided to hold an Indian Ocean Wave Exercise (IOWave11) on 12th October 2011.

A Task Team was established to organize it, with membership comprising Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Oman. The timetable for the transition to the Regional Tsunami Advisory Service Provider (RTSP) service for the IOTWS was adopted, with the service scheduled to commence on 12 October 2011, following the IOWave11 exercise.

An Indian Ocean-wide tsunami exercise is an effective tool for evaluating the readiness of the IOTWS and to identify changes that can improve its effectiveness. There have been few major Indian Ocean tsunamis in the last few years and the IOTWS must be prepared.

Information documents:

Indian Ocean Wave 09

At the 5th Session of the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (ICG/IOTWS) held in April 2008, the Member States recognized the need to test the functioning of the IOTWS and established a Task Team to provide a detailed plan for Exercise  Indian Ocean Wave 2009.

The “IOWave09” Task Team, chaired by Indonesia, reported back to the ICG/IOTWS at its 6th session in April 2009 recommending that an Indian Ocean-wide exercise be held on 14th October 2009 to coincide with World Disaster Reduction Day.

The exercise will simulate the Indian Ocean countries being placed in a Tsunami Warning situation and require the National Tsunami Warning Centres (NTWC) and (optionally) the National Disaster Management Organisations (NDMO) in each Member State to implement their Standard Operating Procedures (SOP).

The exercise scenario will replicate the earthquake parameters of the Magnitude 9.2 earthquake which occurred off the coast of Aceh on 26th December 2004 and the simulated tsunami will take approximately 12 hours to travel from its source to the southern coast of South Africa.  Exercise bulletins will be issued by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) and the exercise will be run in real-time.

To ensure that the NTWCs in each country are fully prepared for this functional exercise, a tabletop exercise was conducted on 14th September using the same scenario that is to be used on 14th October.

Information documents: