Articles for "Disaster relief"

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Security | 31. March 2011

The final stage in the construction of the German-Indonesian tsunami early warning system

On 26 December 2004, a devastating tsunami destroyed large parts of the coastline of the Indian Ocean. It is estimated that 250,000 people lost their lives because there was no early warning system. Shortly afterwards, the German government decided to spend 50 million Euros to develop a tsunami early warning system in Indonesia, the most severely affected country. Scientists from major German research centres presented innovative concepts for such a system to the political decision makers. Convinced of the feasibility of the proposal, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung; BMBF) decided to support the project, now named the German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS), as a joint development led by the German Research Centre for Geosciences (Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum; GFZ) in Potsdam. read more

Security | 29. November 2010

DLR's presence on blogs and Twitter during the volcanic eruption in April 2010

Eyjafjalla

As the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted, in Iceland at the end of March/ early April 2010, its ash cloud created an unprecedented situation for European air travel. By mid-April, air travel over northern and central Europe was resumed. DLR was involved in investigating the ash cloud and its effects on air travel in several different ways. I'd like to use this blog entry to illustrate our experiences and learning processes in online communication over this period in mid April 2010, especially on DLR blogs and on Twitter. read more