This bill would reauthorize and update the Tsunami Warning and Education Act. It adds definitions for Indian Tribes, Tribal organizations, and Native Hawaiian organizations. It directs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and partner agencies to improve tsunami forecasting, warnings, data management, and maps. The bill requires coordination with the United States Geological Survey, the National Science Foundation, and NASA for data and instrumentation. It adds ocean and coastal sensors (for example GNSS, tidal gauges, buoys), calls for better data archiving, and asks for updates to maps, models, and decision-support tools. The bill requires fail-safe warning capability, regular drills (biannual service back-up drills and annual warning drills with emergency managers including Tribal and Native Hawaiian organizations), and placement of Tsunami Warning Coordinators at warning centers. It directs studies and reviews: an alert-level evaluation, a review of NOAA Weather Radio coverage, a GAO study of tsunami program coordination, and a GAO report on preparing for major tsunami scenarios (including Cascadia, Alaska-Aleutian, and Kuril-Kamchatka events). The bill also strengthens the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program by requiring evacuation and inundation mapping, coastal digital elevation models, probabilistic hazard maps, and attention to vertical evacuation structures and debris impacts. It requires a research plan and a public data portal, regular research-to-operations planning, annual reports on program spending, and government-to-government consultation with Indian Tribes. It authorizes $35,000,000 per year for fiscal years 2027–2031, with minimum shares for mitigation and research.
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