Shoigu recalled that Russia has set up a unified federal center of monitoring and prediction. Similar centers have been established in all regions of Russia, and in 68 of them are staffed with full-paid personnel.
This system is necessary for "us to integrate with and organize exchange of information between the centers," the emergency minister recalled.
He said it is necessary to give attention to existing seismic zones and in the next two years complete the conversion of equipment installed at the monitoring and forecasting centers to modern digital technologies. "In implementing this program we have been able to upgrade the equipment in the Far East and Kamchatka by about 70%," Shoigu said.
The minister believes that such serious consequences of a natural disaster in South East Asia could have been prevented if it had had a tidal wave warning center.
Shoigu noted that Russia has in the Far East a tidal wave warning center, because of a fault in the ocean Sakhalin, Kamchatka and the Kuril islands are in a quake-prone zone.
The minister said that the unified Russian system of seismic observation combines five seismic monitoring systems - those run by the Defense Ministry, the Hydrometeorological Center, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the former Gosstroi, and the Institute of Terrestrial Physics.
