Officials from around the world meeting in Japan agreed on Thursday to establish a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean within 12 to 18 months.

The pledge came from a United Nations-sponsored conference on disaster prevention in Kobe, Japan. Salvano Briceno, director of the U.N.'s disaster reduction body outlined the proposed timeline: "We've estimated with a technical institution that in the matter of a year, at latest 18 months, there should be a basic regional capacity on tsunami early warning."

The system is likely to be modeled on the Hawaii-based Pacific warning system, which was set up in 1960 after an earthquake in Chile triggered tidal waves that killed more than 100 people in Japan and other Pacific nations.

U.N. experts will visit Asian nations, including India and Thailand, over the next week to see what their needs are and what they can offer in terms of technology.