Regional Study on the Socio-Economic Impacts of the Indian Ocean Earthquake-Tsunami in Asia

A regional study to analyze the socio-economic and environmental impacts of the 26 December 2004 earthquake and tsunami is currently underway. The study is being implemented by ADPC under the umbrella of the ProVention Consortium, with support from individual international consultants, ECLAC and the World Bank’s Hazard Management Unit. The affected countries being reviewed under this project are Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Maldives and India. The study will also identify actions undertaken jointly by the countries and is expected to result in significant economies of scale, particularly in relation to financial risk transfer.

Two key activities of the project will be: 

• assessment of immediate and medium term impact of the disasters in the region, and 

• the conduct of a regional meeting of key personnel from the Planning and Finance Ministries of affected countries to discuss findings of the study.

Coastal Risk Analysis of Tsunamis and Environmental Remediation (CRATER)

Coastal areas are by far the most vulnerable to the impacts of tsunamis and tidal waves. This was demonstrated again in the recent tsunami, when vast areas were washed away in a matter of minutes and the population had little or no time to escape from the wrath of nature. A recently launched project –CRATER, with core funding from the Italian Ministry for Environment and Territory (IMET) tries to remedy just that. The project uses approaches to develop tools for managing emergencies following tsunami events by analyzing the coastal risks to tsunami impacts. 

The CRATER approach consists of three modules:

• MODULE 1 – RAPIDO/Real time tsunami Alarm Program for the Indian Ocean, consists of a preloaded database of possible tsunami simulated events. It is an immediate action program for pre-early warning and forecasting of tsunami events, which can be immediately implemented and used before the activation of the early warning system. Within the CRATER project, the feasibility of the RAPIDO module will be investigated in order to analyze its applicability, efficiency and reliability.

• MODULE 2 – SAVE/Study Atlas on the Vulnerability of coastal areas required by rescue plans, performs a detailed analysis of tsunami effects on coastal areas. It calculates water levels and speed associated with possible tsunami floods, allowing for the evaluation of vulnerability maps and providing the data necessary for the management of rescue plans.

• MODULE 3 – DATE/Damage Assessment of Tsunami events on the Environment will evaluate the short, medium, and long-term environmental and structural damages caused by tsunami events along the coastline.

CRATER will be applied to the analysis of the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian coastlines, through:

• a feasibility study on the RAPIDO module development, and

• a pilot application of the SAVE and DATE modules at the Kamala Beach and Laem Pakarang in Phuket and Phang Nga provinces respectively.

Initial data collection for the first module was undertaken in a recent start-up mission to Phuket, Thailand.

For more details on the projects contact Mr Aloysius Rego, Director and Team Leader, Disaster Management Systems at ajrego@adpc.net and Ms Supriya Mehta, Program Manager at supriya@adpc.net