Commemorating 20 years since the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami: Warnings past and present

Join UCL Warning Research Centre's upcoming webinar to reflect on the 20 year anniversary of the far-reaching and impactful Andaman Sumatra earthquake.

This event is free.

20 years ago, the Andaman Sumatra earthquake was the second largest earthquake recorded on a seismograph at 9.1–9.3 MW generating a wide-scale Indian Ocean tsunami that killed over 225,000 people in about a dozen countries on 26 December 2004 at 07:58:53 local time.

One of the key issues during the tsunami was that there was no warning system established in the Indian Ocean to detect tsunamis or to warn the general populace living around the ocean. Despite a lag of up to several hours between the earthquake and tsunami in some locations, people were taken by surprise, and were killed. What is even more tragic is that the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) detected the earthquakes and were aware that a large tsunami was likely to have been generated, but they had no capacity to inform the locations to provide a warning. Following the establishment of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System in 2006 numerous warnings for tsunamis have been issued.  

This event will reflect on lessons identified and learnt following 2004, and to consider what future challenges remains.

Format: Webinar - free registration. Links to the Zoom webinar will be circulated to registered attendees in good time ahead of the session. Please ensure you're checking the email address used for booking regularly.

Chaired by: Carina Fearnley, Professor in Warnings and Science Communication, Director, UCL Warning Research Centre

Speakers:

• Ilan Kelman, Professor of Disasters and Health, UCL Department for Risk and Disaster Reduction and UCL Institute for Global Health
• Fatemeh Jalayer, Professor of Geophysical Hazard Risks, UCL Department for Risk and Disaster Reduction
• Dr Jonatan Lassa, Senior scientist, Disaster Risk Management, GNS Science, Te Pῡ Ao
• Mujiburrahman Thontowi, Senior Consultant, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)