Thursday 25 August 2005

P3
1050-1230 hours

370
Marine risk and sustainability: the international response
Beer, Tom¹, Kontar, Evgeny²
1 CSIRO Environmental Risk Network, Aspendale, Vic, Australia
2 Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Author email: tom.beer@csiro.au
The 26 December 2004 tsunami vividly illustrated the risks to life and property that can arise from a marine hazard. It also provided the impetus to accelerate the international response to deal with the issue. This paper reviews the recent scientific response, which concentrates on the hazard issues, and on the political response, which concentrates on the social aspects. Scientific response: There are numerous research institutions and international groupings of research scientist such as the International Tsunami Commission of the IUGG that deal with aspects of marine hazards. As part of the planning for the 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year (IGY+50) the International Council of Science (ICSU) has set up an ad-hoc scoping group to plan for an initiative on Natural and Man-made Hazards. Four key research questions were identified of which: What technologies and methodologies are required to assess the vulnerability of people and places to hazards and how might these be used at a variety of spatial scales? was considered to be the one most amenable to international scrutiny. Societal Response: The World Conference on Disaster Reduction, held in Kobe 18-22 January produced the Hyogo Declaration as well as a Common Statement of the Special Session on the Indian Ocean Disaster. The special session agreed to establish an Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System, similar to the Pacific warning system. Agreement was reached that this would be co-ordinated through the International Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, and agreement was also reached that National Meteorological and Hydrological Agencies would disseminate tsunami warnings and alerts. Further meetings were held to determine how to implement the system.

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