来自夏威夷大学的船上研究人员无意中记录了海啸的传递建议，商业船舶配备类似的设备，以便以深海浮标的成本一小部分创建Ad-hoc海啸检测网络。
The scientists were returning from Guam, where they had been measuring sea elevation in February 2010, when their precision GPS picked up a long-wavelength, open-water tsunami generated by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile. At sea the tsunami amplitude was 9.4 cm and would have been difficult to discern.
该船只有两个Trimble Zephyr天线进给接收器，升级了双频率GPS。“在下一阶段，看看这是可行的，我们是否使用Trimble Ti GNSS扼流圈天线来提高多径缓解并提高准确性，”夏威夷大学海洋科学学院助理研究员James Foster说和技术。
The current warning system is the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Deep Ocean Assessment & Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) program. It has 39 buoys anchored in the Pacific Rim as well as the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Each buoy costs about $750,000 with annual system maintenance of $28 million, according to the U.S. General Accountability Office.
福斯特和他的同事写道a paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in May proposing the ship-based system. "At $15,000 per unit, you could equip 50 ships with GPS for the cost of one buoy," Foster observes.
“这是一种有趣的概念，类似于志愿观察船计划，报告全球天气观测，”国家数据浮标中心的计划经理斯蒂芬Cucullu说。“观看发展将会有趣。”
“我们对设备非常有信心，”福斯特说。“如果2004年印度尼西亚的船只配备了这一领域的海啸，那么摧毁该地区的海啸可能已经检测到，早期和居民早些时候警告。”
