Thai and U.S. officials have dispatched a ship carrying a tsunami warning device designed to protect millions of people around the Indian Ocean from a repeat of the catastrophe two years ago.The buoy is the first deep sea protection system installed in the Indian Ocean to prevent future tragedies.
AFP reports the US-funded Deep-Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) consists of a platform that rests on the seabed to detect seismic activity. The platform sends a signal to a buoy floating on the surface of the water, which in turn communicates by satellite to tsunami warning centers around the Indian Ocean.
It aims to determine if an earthquake has generated a tsunami, to measure the height of the waves and to predict how long it will take to reach land and how much damage it might cause.
