A tsunami simulation exercise was conducted in Hambantota and Batticaloa on October 14 at 6.30 in the morning in order to provide an opportunity to Indian Ocean countries to exercise their operational lines of communications, review their tsunami warnings and emergency response procedures, and to promote emergency preparedness.

This exercise was organized by the Intergovernmental Coordination Group of Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System (ICG/IOTWS). This exercise was conducted in 15 countries in the Indian Ocean on the same day, to coincide with World Disaster Reduction Day.

In this event, the Department of Meteorology as the National Meteorological and Tsunami Early Warning Centre was issued the ‘Tsunami Watch’ and ‘Tsunami Warnings’ only to the Disaster Management Centre according to this exercise. The Disaster Management Centre was disseminated these messages to the selected communities through their early warning dissemination system.

The main purpose of Exercise tsunami incident 2009 was to test national standard operating procedures and the operational lines of communication between the National Tsunami Warning Centre and Japan Metrological Agency (JMA) and Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii, USA and improve coordination throughout the region.