• Marine ecosystems are very complex and are affected by many internal and external factors that can change over time.
  
  The tsunami that struck the Indian coasts on 26th December 2004 with the speed of more than 700 km/hr has caused significant changes in the marine eco system by polluting the marine environment with
  high turbidity and also breaking the coastal vegetations.

• Extensive damage to the life and activities of the living aquatic organisms can be caused by the pollutants that enter the inshore waters.One of which is of significant importance is the accumulation of heavy metals. The heavy metals generally enter the aquatic environment via atmospheric deposition, domestic sewage and mining wastes. The contaminants usually remain either in soluble or suspension form before finally tending to settle down to the bottom and are taken up by the organisms. The variation in heavy metal concentration was due to the continuous stirring of sediments by the high speed of tsunami tidal actions.
  
  Due to their toxicity, the accumulation of these metals in various organs of marine creatures will lead to metal related diseases in the future. This will endanger the aquatic habitat as well as the other organisms.

• Fishes is one of the main aquatic organisms in the food chain and thus, they may often accumulate large amounts of certain metals such as iron, Zinc, Lead, Cadmium, Copper and Magnesium. These metals are common toxic pollutants for fish. Fishes usually assimilate these heavy metals through ingestion of suspended particulates, food materials and / or by constant ion-exchange process of dissolved metals across lipophilic membranes like
  the gills / adsorption of dissolved metals on tissue and membrane surface

• Coral reef reduces the depth of the ocean, increasing the wave height and causing the wave to break and lose its energy before reaching the shore.


• Mangroves reduces the impact of the waves on the land, thus allowing people to escape

• Pamphlets and videos were distributed to explain that people should run to higher ground if seawater retreats suddenly



• Earthquake drills are also practiced at schools

Hazard mapping

• Population distribution, building codes and emergency preparedness in the area is reviewed and enhanced

Meeting people’s needs

• A refuge centre should be build in a safe area to provide a temporary home for the survivors



• Food, water and medicinal equipments should be accessible to the people who are injured



• Counsels must be readily available for those who are traumatised

References
http://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/Dart/Jpg/DART-II_05x.swf
animation for dart

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/dart/dart.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_prediction#The_VAN_method

http://earthsci.org/processes/struct/equake3/EQPredictionControl.html

http://www.shvoong.com/exact-sciences/earth-sciences/1655284-effects-mangrove-forest-coral-reefs/

Tsunami Evaluation Coalition

The TEC had over 50 member agencies from the United Nations, Donors, Non-Governmental organizations and the Red Cross. These organizations have been working together since the TEC was established to:
▪ -To improve policy and practice in the relief and rehabilitation sector.
▪ -To provide some accountability to both the donor and recipient public.
▪ -To improve evaluation in the relief and rehabilitation sector by learning from the TEC process itself.

▪ Results from evaluation

Relief was effective
The relief phase was effective in ensuring that the immediate survival needs were met, through a mixture of local assistance in the immediate aftermath and international assistance in the first weeks after the disaster.

However, these relief responses were generally not based on joint needs assessments and were not well coordinated, leading to an excess of some interventions such as medical teams, alongside shortages in less accessible areas or less popular sectors such as water supply.

Unprecedented response
The scale of the generous public response was unprecedented, not only in the amount of money raised (about $14 billion internationally) but also in the proportion of funding from the general public, and the speed with which money was pledged or donated.

The scale of the funding allowed an early shift to rehabilitation and the use of cash assistance programmes. It also acted as a giant lens, highlighting many of the existing problems in humanitarian response systems.

The scale of funding also created coordination problems as it increased the number of agencies while removing some of the normal incentives for agencies to engage with coordination mechanisms.

Local capacity underestimated
Although local capacity is key to saving lives, this capacity is underestimated and undervalued by the international aid community as well as being overlooked by the international media. International agencies did not engage sufficiently with local actors, and assessed the skills of local actors relative to those of their own agency rather than in terms of skills appropriate to the local context.

Capacity of the humanitarian system is limited
The capacity of the international humanitarian system is not infinitely elastic.

Despite the generous response to the tsunami, the appeals-based system for funding humanitarian emergencies is flawed, with a pattern of under-funding humanitarian response in general.

This pattern of low funding for most emergencies limits the development of capacity within the international aid system, and makes it difficult for the system to scale-up to respond appropriately to a large emergency such as this.

Agencies focus too much on "brand" promotion
Agencies focus too much on promoting their brand and not enough on the needs of the affected populations. Agencies are still not transparent or accountable enough to the people they are trying to assist. In some cases agencies are also not sufficiently accountable to those providing the funding.

Recovery is proving far more difficult than relief
The recovery phase is proving a far bigger challenge than the relief phase. This is due in part to the greater complexity of recovery and to the demands that such complexity places on the aid agencies.

Cleanup and the beginning of recovery

Identification of, religious rites for, and burial of the dead, identification and exchange of information about displaced survivors, reduction of dangerous conditions (unstable houses, infrastructure, and so on), and early attempts to restore vital services where possible now become the focus of activity and effort.

Reconstruction:
Once basic immediate needs have been met, the focus shifts to the reconstruction of economic capacity, livelihoods, communities, and the ongoing institutions of life (schools, public services, and so on).

Establishing command and control
One of the most effective ways to organize sudden responses is through an "Incident Management System" —a well-defined approach to establishing a temporary organization with logistical, operational, planning, and financial capacity to carry out a rescue and recovery effort. Many relief organizations use some variation of an
organizational design with a central authority supported by;

1. An operational command (carrying out activities).
2. A planning group (developing plans for the next "operational cycle" of hours, days, or weeks).
3. A logistics group (organizing the flow of people and materiel in to the action areas).
4. A finance group (arranging for payment to suppliers and workers).
5. A public communication group (keeping relevant constituencies informed).

Unfortunately, the peculiar circumstances of the 2004 South Asian tsunamis create unusually challenging circumstances for the rapid establishment and coordination of relief efforts. In particular, it is difficult to establish effective incident command systems as a result of the following circumstances:

(1) A myriad of places in which it is essential to operate suddenly and simultaneously.

>The tsunamis affected a very large number of different locations along a shoreline stretching for thousands of miles, spreading across about a dozen countries.

>Relief efforts will have to be mounted—and locally coordinated—in hundreds of different locations, challenging the capacity to mount teams with incident command experience in so many locations simultaneously.

(2) Multiple and confusing jurisdictions.

>The impact zone is characterized by many locations with multiple authorities—federal, local, international, community—of many different types—governmental, military, police, paramilitary, public health.

>These are now joined by many outside organizations—international NGOs, the U.N., and so on.

>Sorting out who is in charge, and of what, and who reports to whom, is challenge.

>Incident management experts report that their work is greatly facilitated in locations where clear authority can be established—and delegated to them.

>Where authority is multiple, or shared, and contested, it can be exceedingly difficult to coordinate, direct, and distribute aid.

(3) Political instability.

>In the short run, most of the decisions that need to be made are technical and straightforward—people are doing everything they can, with the resources available, to rescue victims, support the injured, and care for traumatized survivors.

>As the immediate human needs come to be met, however, and the situation stabilizes, the decisions become more controversial.

>While people are generally willing to accept expert guidance and judgment for the technical matters, when it comes to setting longer-term priorities the community will expect to play a more determinative role.

>At this point, the political instability of some of the affected areas caused conflict among different groups about who should be consulted and whose priorities should receive the greatest attention.

• Tsunami Warning System is made up of 26 participating member states throughout the Pacific basin which has the capacity to provide several hours of early warning of tsunamigenic activity. However, sufficient funding and international will is needed, before it could be adapted and introduced throughout the Indian Ocean. Furthermore, more development of rapid communication and evacuation systems must be set up in remote areas with marginalized populations

Seismic monitoring

• The Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) system consists of a surface buoy and a seafloor bottom pressure recording (BPR) package that detects pressure changes caused by tsunamis.

• The surface buoy receives transmitted information from the BPR via an acoustic link and then transmits data to a satellite, which retransmits the data to ground stations for immediate dissemination to NOAA's Tsunami Warning Centers, NOAA's National Data Buoy Center, and NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.
  


• When the internal detection software (Mofjeld) identifies a tsunami, the system ceases its standard mode of reporting water temperature and pressure (which are converted to sea-surface height) every 15 minutes. In event mode, 15-second values are transmitted during the initial few minutes, followed by 1-minute averages. Event mode messages also contain the time of the initial occurrence of the event. The system returns to standard transmission after 4 hours of 1-minute real-time transmissions if no further events are detected.

Animal early warning

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1111_031111_earthquakeanimals.html

• The belief that animals can predict earthquakes has been around for centuries.

• In 373 B.C., historians recorded that animals, including rats, snakes and weasels, deserted the Greek city of Helice in droves just days before a quake devastated the place.

• Similar accounts of such anomalous animal behavior have been reported since- Fishes swimming violently, chickens that stop laying eggs and bees leaving their hive in a panic have been reported. Countless pet owners claimed to have witnessed their cats and dogs acting strangely before the ground shook—barking or whining for no apparent reason, or showing signs of nervousness and restlessness.

• One of the proposed theories is that animals feel the Earth vibrate before humans. Others suggest they sense electrical changes in the air or gas released from the Earth.

• Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, where tragedy killed countless lives and caused great loss to property. Researchers there hope to use animals as a prediction tool by studying them with the hope of finding out what these animals feel or sense before the Earth shakes.

• Successful forecast of a major earthquake have been achieved before by China in 1975. Partly by observing strange antics of animals, Chinese officials ordered the evacuation of Haicheng, a city with one million people, just days before a 7.3-magnitude quake. Thus, only a minor percentage of the population were injured or killed. The estimated number of fatalities and injuries would have exceeded 150,000 if the city had not been evacuated..

• However there are some people who are doubtful even though cases of strange animal behavior prior to earthquakes have been documented. The United States Geological Survey, a government agency that provides scientific information about the Earth, argues that a reproducible connection between a particular behavior and the occurrence of a quake has never been made..

• Andy Michael, a geophysicist at USGS said that, "What we're faced with is a lot of anecdotes and animals react to so many things—being hungry, defending their territories, mating, predators—so it's hard to have a controlled study to get that advanced warning signal."

• reported animal behavior before an earthquake is simply their response to an increase in low-frequency electromagnetic signals. electromagnetic activity can be generated by the fracturing of crystalline rock in fault lines before earthquakes.

Recurrence interval prediction

• study of the offsets in sedimentary layers near fault zones


• the presence of peat in offset layers can provide us with a numerical age due to the high amounts of carbon. Hence recurrence interval can be determined
  

Seismic gap

• a zone along a tectonically active area where no earthquakes have occurred recently, but it is known that elastic strain is building in the rocks.


• If a seismic gap can be identified, then it might be an area expected to have a large earthquake in the near future.

 High levels of nitrates in the groundwater, which pose serious health threats such as ethemoglobinemia to infants and young children, if ingested.

 Cholera, typhoid and dysentery were prevalent due to contaminated water supplies.

 Numerous mosquito breeding which hastened the spread of malaria.

 Malnutrition due to shortage of food aids which cannot reach badly affected areas.

 Victims suffered severe trauma and anxiety of anticipating another major tsunami.

Glossary
Aquifers- underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock or unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, silt, or clay)

Ethemoglobinemia- The growth of certain bacteria that readily convert nitrate to nitrite since infants have relatively low acidity in their stomachs compared to adults.

 Ecosystems such as mangroves, coral reefs, wetlands were battered

 The spread of solid and liquid waste and industrial chemicals, water pollution and the destruction of sewage collectors and treatment plants threaten the environment

 Rapid clean-up of affected areas has also resulted in inappropriate disposal methods, including air burning and open dumping, leading to secondary impacts on the environment.

 Salinisation and contamination of water bodies such as rivers and aquifers due to leakage in sewer tanks affected soil fertility and made its sterile. This affects yield of crops.

ECONOMIC
IMPACT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake

 Seamen and the coastal fishing communities suffered a plunge in their income uptake due to the damage of fishing gears and boats

 An estimated 66% of the fishing fleet and industrial infrastructure in coastal regions were damaged by the wave surges which accounts for several millions of dollars

 Tourist were reluctant to visit unaffected resorts near the disaster stricken area due to psychological fears resulting a drop in tourist arrivals

 Both the earthquake and the tsunami may have affected shipping in the Malacca Straits by changing the depth of the seabed and by disturbing navigational buoys and old shipwrecks. Compiling new navigational charts may take months or years.