Nearly two-years after the worst tsunami disaster The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and government of Thailand launched the first Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami buoy station in the Indian Ocean to assist in detecting tsunamis.

The DART system provides real-time tsunami detection as waves travel across open waters. According to a NOAA press release, the stations consist of a bottom pressure sensor that is anchored to the seafloor and a companion moored surface buoy. An acoustic link transmits data from the bottom pressure sensor to the surface buoy, and then satellite links relay the data to ground stations.

The DART buoys were developed by the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory at a cost of about $450,000 and are being integrated with NOAA’s operational tsunami warning system. The station’s data will be available to all nations through the World Meteorological Organization Global Telecommunications System and will be part of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems.

This buoy is but one of an anticipated 22 tsunameters planned for the Indian Ocean’s regional tsunami warning system, the agency said. NOAA will provide a second DART buoy farther to the south in the spring of 2007. This is part of an end-to-end warning system that includes tide gauges, communications upgrades, modeling and dissemination systems for five countries -- Indonesia, India, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

According to NOAA, since 1850 alone tsunamis have been responsible for the loss of more than 420,000 lives and billions of dollars of damage to coastal structures and habitats. Most of these casualties were caused by local tsunamis that occur about once per year somewhere in the world. For example, the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami near Thailand killed about 130,000 people close to the earthquake and about 58,000 people on distant shores. Predicting when and where the next tsunami will strike is impossible but the idea is these sensor networks will help avert calamity and give localities early warning to evacuate as many people as possible.