Summary

The 2nd UNESCO-IOC Global Tsunami Symposium "Two Decades After 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami: Reflection and the Way Forward" main event will be held in Banda Aceh, Indonesia during 11-14 November 2004. The symposium is hosted by the Goverment of Indonesia through its Agency of Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics (BMKG) in collaboration with the UNESCO-IOC Tsunami Resilience Section and IUGG Joint Tsunami Commission.

The Indian Ocean Tsunami on 26^th December 2004, which is also known as the Aceh Tsunami, resulted in the loss of 228,000 lives and the displacement of over 1.6 million people around the Indian Ocean, with estimated economic losses of USD$10 billion. At that time, while a tsunami warning existed for the Pacific Ocean, no tsunami warning system existed for the Indian Ocean and the knowledge of tsunami risk was low. This catastrophe became a wakeup for the establishment of a regional tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean, as well as in other ocean basins in the world threatened by tsunami hazards with no existing tsunami warning system.

After years of implementation, the global tsunami warning system has been tested by tsunamis with various complexities and challenges, including the 2011 East Japan Tsunami-Earthquake, the 2018 Palu and Krakatau Non-Seismic Tsunamis, and the 2022 Hunga-Tonga Ha’apai volcano-generated tsunami.

To reflect upon the achievements of the systems and the lessons learnt from each tsunami event to improve the capacity of the warning and mitigation system, the symposium will bring together tsunami warning specialists, disaster managers, scientists, engineers, disaster risk reduction practitioners, and policymakers from around the world to discuss the state-of-the-art warning systems and the latest advances in tsunami science and engineering to help globally enhance tsunami disaster preparedness and mitigation. The symposium is also intended to serve as a global platform to review the contributions of each regional tsunami warning and mitigation system towards achieving the objectives of the UN Ocean Decade Tsunami Programme (ODTP) under the “Safe Ocean” outcome of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development by 2030: 1) More accurate and timely tsunami warnings; 2) 100% at-risk communities prepared and resilient to the tsunami threat. This will be achieved through activities such as the implementation of the UNESCO-IOC Tsunami Ready Recognition Programme (TRRP). During the symposium, several coastal communities will be recognized and inaugurated as Tsunami Ready Communities.