Mathematical model to help in installation of tsunami detection buoys

Washington, April 29 (ANI): Australian scientists have come up with a mathematical model that promises to pin point ten optimal sites for the installation of tsunami detection buoys and sea-level monitors.

The quick and cost-effective installation of a detection system could provide warning for the maximum number of people should a potentially devastating tsunami occur again in the Indian Ocean.

The author of the study, Layna Groen and Lindsay Botten of the Department of Mathematical Sciences, at the University of Technology, and Katerina Blazek previously at Sinclair Knight Merz, in Sydney, NSW, Australia, suggest that their model has significant implications for the construction and maintenance of the tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean.

The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) planned the establishment of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (IOTWS).

The detection/alert system is the crucial component consisting of seismic detectors, sea-level monitors and deep-sea pressure sensors attached to deep ocean buoys.

Groen and colleagues have focused on the latter two components as being critical to an adequate warning system.

They point out that relatively few detection buoys are yet in place and a number of sea-level monitoring stations are still to be constructed.

Their study, which uses the well-known modelling tool "Mathematica", should help the IOTWS decision makers in determining where the remaining buoys should be placed.

The team's analysis supports the positioning of the 40 proposed buoys, but points out that just 1o buoys would be adequate for warning the maximum number of people.

They add that the same mathematical modelling approach could be applied to tsunami detection in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and Black Seas.

The study has appeared in the International Journal of Operational Research. (ANI)