Applying a “cascading disasters” approach: Warning of non-seismically induced tsunamis in Indonesia

Building on 30 qualitative interviews, two science-policy workshops and informal discussions, for a total of 88 anonymous participants, this contribution details the successes and challenges encountered by those currently pushing for better warning from non-seismically induced tsunamis.

Following the 2004 Indian ocean tsunami which caused more than 167,000 victims in Indonesia alone, Indonesian and German geoscientists were instrumental in developing the Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (InaTEWS). In 2018, a decade after InaTEWS establishment, two tsunamis in Indonesia, triggered by the Anak Krakatau volcanic eruption and by a coastal landslide in Palu, went unwarned, causing more than thousand casualties combined.

To this day, the InaTEWS only produces warnings based on seismic sensors, reflecting gaps between the Indonesian agencies that focus on seismology, volcanology, geology and oceanography amongst others. The possibility of an Anak Krakatau scenario had been identified in a 2013 academic paper. This publication specifically focuses on two German-Indonesian research projects describing themselves as interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary and finds that structural factors and varying epistemic cultures hamper cooperation across science and policy.