Bremerhaven, Germany (dpa) - A computer simulation of Indonesian earthquakes, which is able to save precious minutes before a tsunami warning, was delivered Thursday to German seismologists.
Testing of the software is to begin in December in Jakarta at a tsunami early-warning centre jointly set up by German and Indonesian authorities. Berlin is funding the science project, launched after the Asian Tsunami of 2004 killed 230,000 people, DPA reported.
Instead of doing complex calculations, the simulation rapidly compares each earth tremor with 5,000 pre-calculated scenarios to see if a killer wave is likely.
The software was developed by Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Ocean Research in the port city Bremerhaven.
Buoys which measure seabed movements and pulses in the water have already been placed along the Sumatran coast and the Jakarta lab has already issued coastal warnings after earthquakes.
The software will make the predictions both more precise and quicker, institute scientists said as the software was handed over the German Geo-Research Centre in Potsdam, near Berlin.
Indonesia suffered 160,000 deaths in the 2004 quake. A tsunami can reach its coasts within less than half an hour of offshore quakes.
Joern Behrens, who led the software project, explained, "The system compares readings on site with scenarios that have been calculated theoretically in advance and estimates the risk."
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