An Operational Tsunami Forecast Tool

The NOAA National Center for Tsunami Research has developed Desktop SIFT to provide tsunamis forecasts in an operational environment. The Desktop SIFT application combines seismic parameters, sea-level data from tsunami-monitoring DART buoys, and Stand-by Inundation Models (SIMs) to provide estimates of tsunami amplitudes and arrival times for potential at-risk communities.

The system was developed as a collaboration between the NOAA Center for Tsunami Research, the National Weather Service Tsunami Warning Centers and academia. Both system robustness and ease-of-use for the tsunami warning center staff have been important goals during the development and implementation.

The architecture of this operational system is based on the Jini/JavaSpaces Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) framework. The system is implemented using the Java JDK 1.6 language, Jini/JavaSpaces for the SOA framework, PostgreSQL database, PostGIS spatial daatabase extension, Java Persistence API (JPA), and Java Management Extensions (JMX).

See http://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/