The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet of the Government of New Zealand has contracted Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) to provide for systems engineering and integration work and deliver a regional tsunami buoy network.
“SAIC is proud to be assisting the Government of New Zealand establish a regional tsunami buoy network to provide one of the important near real-time data sources used in their warning centers,” said Jim Scanlon, SAIC executive vice president and general manager of SAIC’s Defense Systems Group. “Deployment of these tsunami buoy systems in the South Pacific will further strengthen the international effort to establish a global tsunami buoy network.”
The multi-million dollar contract is a firm-fixed-price, single award with work to be completed by the end of 2020. When completed, New Zealand’s network will consist of 15 tsunami buoys that will provide deep-ocean assessment and reporting to monitor changes in sea level and provide real-time ocean bottom pressure data to New Zealand’s National Emergency Management Agency.
For more than a decade, SAIC has been building deep-sea sensor buoys to continuously record and transmit oceanic measurements for use in forecasting and alerts. The company has deployed more than 45 observational buoy systems for nation-state customers that include Australia, Chile, China, India, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, and Thailand.
Tsunami buoys are one of several available sources of earth observational data that assist in the development of tsunami warnings. A tsunami warning system typically includes the collection and analysis of local and global earth observations such as seismic data, tide gauge data, tsunami buoy data, and other reports. The warning center staff then thoroughly assesses this data using the latest data analysis techniques and then integrated into their state-of-the-art tsunami forecast models.
