REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Germany handed over the Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning Systems or "Inatews" management to the Meteorology Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), as the cooperation that started in 2005 had ended.

"The Inatews cooperation was running smoothly and we achieved many milestones in its development," the chief of BMKG, Andi Eka Sakya, said here on Tuesday.

Andi explained that Germany was one of the donor countries, including China, Japan, United States, and France, which helped in building Inatews after the tsunami that hit Aceh and some areas in India in December 2004.

In particular, Germany contributed to Inatews' development from the upstream to the downstream, including the monitoring system, data processing and analysis, publication, capacity building as well as increasing the communities' awareness and readiness as part of mitigation management.

"In technology, the most important breakthrough from the development of Inatews is its capability to send information related to the tsunami's potential force within five minutes," Andi said.

Inatews was officially launched by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on November 22, 2008, and its early phases were focused on the development of earthquake and tsunami monitoring infrastructure building.

The cooperation was continued to enhance human resources' capacity through operating system's training and other training related to Inatews.

The last phase of the cooperation was the transfer of Inatews' full management to BMKG.

The Vice Ambassador of Germany to Indonesia, Thorsten Hutter, said the large number of victims, which reached more than 200 thousand people, of the earthquake and the tsunami in Aceh in 2004 was the reason for Germany's involvement in Inatews' development.

"We want to avoid a similar disaster in the future," Hutter said.

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