Regional Training for CARIBE-EWS PTWC Enhanced Products, Barbados, December 2015

Tsunami Warning and Emergency Response Using the PTWC Enhanced Products for National Tsunami Threat Decision-Making

Bridgetown, Barbados
7-10 December 2015

This four-day training workshop is intended to enable tsunami warning focal points (TWFPs), national tsunami warning centers (NTWC), and tsunami emergency responders (TERs) to effectively receive, analyse and take appropriate action in response to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) enhanced tsunami forecast products for the Caribbean and its adjacent regions. This training workshop will cover tsunami warning operations and the use of the PTWC Enhanced Products for tsunami threat decision-making, with specific attention on the tsunami warning chain and their standard operating procedures (SOPs). Topics will include warning and response SOPs and challenges, warning decision support tools, warning messages and alerting, evacuation concepts and planning, and awareness strategies. Over the last 10+ years, with improvements in data quality, quantity, and real-time availability, PTWC’s 2 response time has dropped significantly from an hour to 5-10 minutes for tsunami events. At the same time, with each great earthquake and tsunami since the 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami helping to increase scientific understanding, better techniques have been developed to quickly characterize the earthquake and numerically model the tsunami. In the Pacific, the PTWS adopted use of the PTWC enhanced products based on numerical forecast models on 1 October 2014. For the Caribbean and adjacent regions, the changeover to PTWC’s new enhanced forecast products was approved by the ICG/CARIBEEWS VIII (2013), introduced in CARIBE WAVE 2013, and since October 26, 2015, are being issued in parallel with the existing products. The changeover to solely the new products is planned to take place on 1 March 2016.

 Informational Documents