FY 2001

TIMING: Sanriku network for the exchange of tsunami information

Imamura, F., S. Koshimura, H. Iwasa, S. Imoto, K. Sato, and N. Shuto

In Proceedings of the International Tsunami Symposium 2001 (ITS 2001), Session 5-3, Seattle, WA, 7–10 August 2001, 589–593, (on CD-ROM) (2001)

Tsunami gauges have been widely installed by local autonomies along the Sanriku coast, an area that has been stricken and damaged by tsunamis more frequently than any in the world. Since most of the tsunami gauges are installed at ports and harbors to measure the tsunami height in the shallow sea, there have been difficulties utilizing them for providing evacuation information even if they detect tsunamis. We propose a system to exchange and share information from a number of gauges in real time, and make use of it for warning and prediction. Although the measured data may not be in time for issuing a tsunami warning to a local community operating the gauge itself, its data, if transferred to the other communities in real time, will be useful for warning and evacuation in the nearby communities that may be stricken afterwards. We develop a prototype system, which is called TIMING (Tsunami Integrated Media INformation Guide), to construct a real-time network system for sharing the data measured by tsunami gauges.