SENAT
Report n° 117 (2007-2008) by M. Roland COURTEAU, Senator (for the parliament office for the evaluation of scientific and technological choices) - Appendix to the minutes of the 7 December 2007 session
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2. The reasons for these blocks
The observed obstacles blocking France's participation in the setting up of a tsunami warning system for the various basins all share the same origin: due to a lack of political will, the French contribution is the subject of no global action plan and depends upon the good will of the various engineering departments, ministries and scientific bodies. As the latter do not benefit from sufficient funding due to the absence of any specific budget dedicated to setting up tsunami warning systems, progress has been very slow.
a) The absence of a global vision
France is the only country to belong to the four intergovernmental coordination groups for setting up a tsunami warning system. In addition, the design and implementation of a monitoring system necessitates a large number of partners, at both the ministerial level and the public-service, scientific-body and local-government level.
Unfortunately, ever since France agreed in 2005 to contribute to the tsunami warning systems, no government has thought strategically about this issue in order to establish a clear political line, define each actor's responsibilities, and name a national coordinator.
While it is true that the Ministry of Ecology (via the Pollution and Risk Prevention Department, or "Pollution and Risk Prevention Department") and the Ministry of the Interior (via the DDSC or "Defense and Civil Protection Department") set up in the spring of 2006 a national technical coordination group, its effectiveness is limited insofar as it depends on the good will of its members, due to a lack of any specific political directives.
This lack of coordination can engender absurdities. For example, the initial French project in the Indian Ocean called for setting up a national tsunami warning centre in La Réunion with its own expert-assessment capacities, without having first considered the needs of the other basins or the assessment means that already existed. However, this project was never carried out due to a lack of funding, but also because it turned out that Météo France was not best suited to carrying out this mission.
Similarly, the purchase of new tide gauges and the updating of already-installed devices in the four basins was the subject of neither a global development plan, nor a prior analysis to determine the most advantageous solution with regard to installation speed and maintenance costs. Although SHOM was unofficially put in charge of this task, this mission was never the subject of any specific directive issued by its board of directors, thereby engendering the observed delays.
b) The absence of funding
The French contribution to the tsunami warning systems also runs up against a lack of available funding for the necessary actions. Indeed, up until now, only the project for setting up a national warning centre in the Indian Ocean benefited from a suitable budget meant to cover all project costs - even if your rapporteur believes that the funding made available at the time was not necessarily spent on the most important measures.
What's more, this budget only provided for equipment financing. However, numerous actions also necessitate operational funding. For example, the rapid installation of new measuring devices (seismic stations and tide gauges) and updating the already existing devices require the services of one or more dedicated engineers over a period of several months. Once the equipment has been installed, the question then arises as to transmission costs. For instance, the seismic data must be transmitted by VSAT satellite, which proves quite costly. However, not only must the bodies meant to carry out these tasks often pay for these projects out of their own pockets, but also no agreement has been signed between these same bodies and their regulators specifically laying out their new tsunami-monitoring missions. Therefore, their budgets make no provision for any "tsunami projects", as such. As a result, it is very difficult for them to devote money and personnel to missions that they are not officially responsible for carrying out and for which they receive no funding.
A few measures have been financed by several ministries. For example, as has already been mentioned, the Ministry of Ecology assigned BRGM with carrying out a study on the tsunami vulnerability of the French coasts in the Mediterranean and West Indies, as well as designing a database summarizing all tsunamis to have struck metropolitan France and the West Indies.
Likewise, the Junior Minister's Office for the Overseas Territories has financed several pieces of equipment in the overseas territories, including 4 tide gauges in Guadeloupe, sirens in Wallis and Futuna and in New Caledonia, and a system of dissemination of tsunami alerts.
Nevertheless, due to the lack of a global strategic vision and an action plan put together by all the partners involved in setting up a tsunami warning system, the sums invested remain limited and there is a substantial risk of witnessing a multiplication of small, unrelated projects whose continuity is not guaranteed.