The December 26, 2004 giant earthquake and tsunami killed over 200,000 people and caused billions of dollars of damages in 12 countries around the Indian Ocean (UN, 2007). Many lives could have been saved if there had been an effective tsunami warning system in this part of the world. The tsunami exposed major deficits in developing countries’ hazard management and emergency response systems. Following the 2004 tsunami, the international ocean science community is accelerating work on understanding tsunamis, their geological causes, and their impacts on coastal regions. This devastating tsunami has prompted countries around the world to reassess tsunami risks to their coastal communities and to develop response strategies for future events.
Natural hazard mitigation is a complex endeavor that requires direct links between natural and social sciences. For example, an effective early warning system must include not only the ocean technologies to accurately detect an emerging tsunami, but also a public notification system through which the population can be timely warned by the local government and other sources. Indeed, tsunami readiness involves two key components: awareness, which may be improved by educating key decision makers, emergency managers, and the public about the nature (physical processes) and threat (frequency of occurrence, impact) of a hazard; and mitigation, which may be improved through pre-event planning. In recent years, disaster management has changed from viewing a problem in isolation to a policy of sustainable hazard mitigation that views hazard mitigation as an integral part of a much larger context. Communities must take responsibility for choosing where and how development proceeds through land-use planning. Toward that end, each locality evaluates its environmental resources and hazards, chooses future losses that it is willing to bear, and ensures that development and other community actions and policies adhere to those goals. Disaster management and planning require a longer-term view that takes into account the overall effect of mitigation efforts on this and future generations ( Mileti, 1999). An effective early warning system must be an integral part of disaster risk reduction strategies in national development frameworks and requires cooperation amongst many partners at local, regional, national, and international levels (UN ISDR, 2006a). Thus an effective tsunami hazard mitigation program involves inter-disciplinary collaboration between natural and social sciences and requires ocean researchers to work closely with hazard management officers.
The objectives of this study are to identify the key factors (e.g., science and management planning) that will make a tsunami warning system most effective, to develop a framework in which results of natural science and engineering research can be effectively integrated into coastal natural hazard planning, and to develop a numerical example that illustrates how benefit-cost analysis may be used to assess early warning systems. The study provides a comprehensive review of literature on tsunami and related research. Section 2 describes a multidisciplinary approach for tsunami research. Tsunami warning systems are explained in Section 3. Social science research and management programs for natural hazards are discussed in Section 4. Section 5 summarizes issues related to economic analyses of warning systems. Section 6 presents an example of the South Pacific region. The study is summarized in Section 7.