At its 11th session (Putrajaya, Malaysia, April 2017), the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (ICG/IOTWMS) decided to organise an Indian Ocean Wave Exercise (IOWave18) in 2018 and established a Task Team to plan and conduct the exercise. At its recent intersessional meeting held in Jakarta, Indonesia on 16th September, the Task Team decided to conduct the IOWave18 exercise on 4th and 5th September 2018. All IOTWMS Member States are encouraged to participate in the exercise to community level. Exercise IOWave18 will simulate Indian Ocean countries being put in a tsunami warning situation and require the National Tsunami Warning Centre (NTWC) and the National and/or Local Disaster Management Offices (NDMO/LDMO) in each country to implement their Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Exercise IOWave16, held in September 2016, set a new benchmark for community participation with half of Member States (12 out of 24) undertaking evacuations. In addition to testing the SOPs and communication links at all levels of the warning chain, a primary objective of IOWave18 is to enhance tsunami preparedness at community level. To this end, Exercise IOWave 18 will also provide an opportunity for Member States to test the indicators of Indian Ocean Tsunami Ready (IOTR) programme in pilot communities. IOTR is a community performance-based programme that facilitates a structural and systematic approach in building tsunami preparedness through an active collaboration of the public (community), community leaders, and national and local emergency management agencies. IOTR guidelines and associated training resources on preparation of Tsunami Evacuation Maps, Plans and Procedures (TEMPP) can be downloaded from http://www.ioc-tsunami.org/tempp-resources. Exercise IOWave18 will comprise two scenarios on successive days, one in the north western Indian Ocean off the coast of Iran and the other in the eastern Indian Ocean off the west coast of northern Sumatra. The first scenario will commence at 0600 hrs UTC on 4th September and will simulate a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Iran. The second scenario will commence at 0300 hrs on 5th September and will simulate a magnitude 9.3 earthquake off the west coast of Northern Sumatra. Both scenarios will generate simulated tsunami waves travelling across the Indian Ocean basin. Member States are invited to participate in either or both events, which will run in real time. The IOTWMS Tsunami Service Providers (TSP) of Australia, India and Indonesia will provide exercise bulletins and detailed tsunami threat advice on their password-protected websites, and will send notification messages to the Tsunami Warning Focal Points (TWFP) as data is updated during the events. The IOWave18 Exercise Manual will be distributed by the end of March 2018 with further details of the exercise scenarios and the exercise evaluation to be conducted afterwards. Guiding principles for the planning and conduct of the exercise are provided in Annex 1 and a checklist of activities to enable Member States to prepare for IOWave18 is provided in Annex 2 of IOC Circular Letter No. 2703.

Indian Ocean Countries to test tsunami warning and evacuation procedures in ocean-wide tsunami exercise (UNESCO Media Release)

115,000 people evacuate in the Indian Ocean-wide tsunami exercise (UNESCO Media Release)

115,000 people evacuate in the Indian Ocean-wide tsunami exercise (IOC Tsunami Programme website)