The Snapshots aim to bring the work of the IOC UNESCO REGIONAL Tsunami Early Warning System (TEWS) to a wider audience. This project of the IOC UNESCO Tsunami Section takes place within the framework of the United Nation Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and its Safe Ocean Outcome. It complements the more specialized fact sheets by highlighting actions, communities, officials, events, tsunami service providers and tsunami information centers. 

The largest earthquake recorded in the 20th century with a magnitude of 9.5 occurred on the coast of southern Chile on 22 May, 1960, and generated a Pacific-wide tsunami that travelled across the Pacific causing substantial damage and loss of life along the Pacific Coast of Chile, in Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines. 

In response to this Pacific-wide catastrophic event, the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific (ICG/ITSU) was established in 1965 to provide timely and reliable alerts that depended on the free and open sharing of seismic and sea level data to continuously monitor and evaluate tsunamigenic events with the robust international communication systems for timely dissemination of alerts to all countries. 

ICG/ITSU was renamed to International Coordination Group for the Pacific Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (ICG/PTWS) in 2005 to focus on commitments of Member States to continually embrace the comprehensive nature of tsunami risk reduction. ICG/PTWS is a subsidiary body of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).