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Tsunami-Detecting Network in Development
The network would offer an inexpensive alternative to buoys such as those in a U.S.-designed system to be placed in the Indian Ocean. The system is known as DART-2, for Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis. The Pacific system is called DART-1.
DART-1, coordinated by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii and the Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, has buoys deployed mostly near U.S. territory but collaborates with Japan, which has a sophisticated warning system.
  A computer model is projected over University of Pittsburgh professor Louise Comfort as she talks about the model and her research into tsunami detection Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2006, at her research lab on campus in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic) (Keith Srakocic - AP) 
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"The huge expense is the maintenance of these buoys because they have to have a big oceangoing ship to visit them every year, change the batteries," Comfort said. "Nations like Indonesia and Thailand can't afford it."
A Pittsburgh computer professor, Taieb Znati, said the sensors would have computing ability that would enable them "to say something about what's going on in real time."
"They will facilitate the detection of earthquakes and things in a much shorter time," he said.
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