Summary

At the UNESCO-IOC 2^nd Global Tsunami Symposium on commemorating the 20^th year of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, it was agreed that the Indian Ocean is much safer against the threat of tsunamis than it was in 2004. The symposium came up with the statement “Global Tsunami Warning and Mitigation: Building Sustainability for the next decade through Transformation and Innovation”, following which UNESCO and its partners called on States and civil society to drastically step up their investments and efforts to strengthen Tsunami Early Warning Systems and achieve 100% of Tsunami Ready Communities across the world by 2030.

In line with these priorities, the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (ICG/IOTWMS) at its 14^th session in Jakarta, in November 2024, agreed for the UNESCO-IOC Indian Ocean Tsunami Information Centre (IOTIC) and the IOTWMS Secretariat to conduct the Tsunami Evacuation Plans, Maps, and Procedures (TEMPP) training workshop in 2025.

This training workshop will be hosted in Hyderabad from 9 to 20 March 2025 by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) at the facilities of the International Training Centre for Operational Oceanography (ITCOOcean), a UNESCO Category 2 Centre.

The objectives of this training/workshop include:

• Strengthening capacities of IOTWMS Member States to develop Tsunami Evacuation Maps, Plans, and Procedures;
• Strengthening capacities of IOTWMS Member States to implement UNESCO-IOC Tsunami Ready Recognition Programme;
• Sharing lessons learned from the UNESCAP Phase-2c Project on “Strengthening tsunami early warning in the North-West Indian Ocean through regional cooperation”.