The 28th Meeting of the ASEAN Sub-Committee on Meteorology and Geophysics (SCMG), Vientiane, Lao PDR, 19-21 September 2006

The meteorology and seismology officials from ASEAN countries met in Vientiane on 19-21 September 2006 to review the progress of ASEAN cooperation in meteorology and geophysics. The Meeting was also attended by representatives from WMO, UNESCO-IOC and the Korea Meteorology Administration (KMA).

High on the agenda is the current initiative to establish the monitoring network of the Tsunami Early Warning System in ASEAN. At this Meeting, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand provided updates on activities relating to the development of the national Tsunami early warning systems in their respective countries. In-country and also regional activities have been undertaken in the past year to strengthen the capacity of ASEAN to monitor the earthquake and Tsunami occurrences, and to mitigate their disasters. These countries have installed several new instruments such as seismic gauges, DART, developments Tsunami of tsunami modelling capability and national tsunami response plan. WMO and UNESCO-IOC have been actively involved in most of the regional activities in this undertaking.

As it is important for Member Countries to continue to engage in discussions on the development of their national tsunami early warning systems including regional issues on data and information exchange, the Meeting agreed with Malaysia’s proposal that the Technical Task Force for the Establishment of Monitoring Network of the Tsunami Early Warning System in ASEAN shall continue to meet to address those issues. The Meeting thanked Indonesia for its offer to hold the 3rd Technical Task Force Meeting which is tentatively scheduled in March 2007.

The ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC) and the ASEAN Earthquake Information Centre (AEIC) continue to play an active role in the dissemination of meteorological and seismic data and information to ASEAN Member Countries as well as to other ASEAN bodies, and to implement capacity building activities benefiting Member Countries.

The Meeting appreciated the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) for organising the Training Workshop for the Use of Numerical Weather Prediction Products, which will be held on 30 October-3 November 2006. Activities of the Training Workshop will be supported by the ASEAN-ROK Special Cooperation Fund.

Indonesia will implement two activities in 2007 in support of the ASEAN-help-ASEAN programmem, namely (i) Field Course on Local Scale (District) Climate Forecast Application, and (ii) Training Course on the Understanding of Earthquake, Tsunami and Mitigation of their Effects. The Government of Indonesia will provide full support to the other ASEAN Member Countries to participate in the two activities.

Efforts to strengthen cooperation with the UNESCO IOC ICG/PTWS and ICG/IOTWS with the SCMG were also discussed at the Meeting.

Link to the Report of the 28th Meeting of SCMG