Natural disasters such as tsunamis often occur without warning to people living on or close to the coastline. In such circumstances, personal injury and death may occur. Any early warning of an approaching tsunami is very important.
Depending on the coastline, a tsunami may arrive at one location before arriving at another location; hence observation points along the coastline can be equipped with a system to allow an observer to activate notice of an impending tsunami.
Often there will be a central authority which maintains contact with ocean based tsunami monitors and the staff at that central authority may also have knowledge of an approaching tsunami.
Unidata equipment, primarily Neon Remote Loggers can be set up with cell phone or satellite internet connections to provide two specific early warning functions, local activation of an alarm and central activation of an alarm.
For local activation of an alarm on sighting of an approaching tsunami, a person can go to the Tsunami Early Warning Equipment (TEWE) located on or near the shore and operate a button which activates the local alarm siren, strobe light and communicates that alarm to the central Neon Server by cell phone or satellite.
Upon receipt of the alarm at the central location, authorities can then choose to manually activate other TEWE at different locations, perhaps in the same region, to alert the people in the area of the approaching tsunami.
The centrally located system personnel may choose to activate all or a selected regional subset of the remotely located TEWE on advice from other local authorities or a central ocean Tsunami Warning Centre.
The TEWE includes a Neon Remote Logger, a small redundant solar charging system, a redundant battery system, a high power siren, capable of sending an audible warning signal more than 1km away and a high intensity strobe warning light capable of being seen up to 2km away. The TEWE is a complete package, capable of being installed on or close to the coast. The TEWE systems routinely communicate with the central Neon Server to confirm operational status on an hourly basis.
