33 U.S.C. § 3204 — National tsunami hazard mitigation program

(a) The Administrator, coordinating with the Administrator of FEMA and the heads of other agencies the Administrator considers relevant, must conduct a community-based tsunami-hazard mitigation program. It must improve tsunami preparedness and resilience in at-risk areas of the United States and its territories. (b) While conducting the program, the Administrator must establish a coordinating committee made up of Federal, State, local, and tribal government officials. The Administrator may create subcommittees for issues specific to a region. The committee must— (1) recommend how to allocate money appropriated for this program; (2) ensure that the areas described in section 3203(c) in the United States and its territories have an opportunity to participate; (3) recommend to the National Weather Service ways to improve the TsunamiReady program, especially ways to make communities more tsunami-resilient through inundation maps and other mitigation practices; and (4) ensure that every part of the program is integrated with ongoing hazard-warning and risk-management activities, emergency-response plans, and mitigation programs in affected areas. This includes integrating information that helps plan tsunami evacuation routes. (c) The program must include— (1) technical and financial assistance to coastal States, territories, tribes, and local governments to develop and carry out activities under this section; (2) integrating tsunami-preparedness and mitigation programs into ongoing State-based hazard-warning, resilience-planning, and risk-management activities in affected areas. These include predisaster planning, emergency response, evacuation planning, disaster recovery, hazard mitigation, and community development and redevelopment planning; (3) coordination with other Federal preparedness and mitigation programs to leverage Federal investment, avoid duplication, and maximize effort; (4) activities that encourage Federal, State, territorial, tribal, and local governments and nongovernmental entities to adopt tsunami-resilience, preparedness, warning, and mitigation measures. These activities include education and risk-communication programs that discourage development in high-risk areas; (5) activities supporting regional tsunami-hazard and risk assessments. The assessments may include— (A) tsunami sources and sizes and other relevant historical data about tsunamis in the region, including paleotsunami data; (B) inundation models and maps of critical infrastructure and socioeconomic vulnerability in areas subject to tsunami inundation; (C) maps of evacuation areas and routes, including, when appropriate, traffic studies evaluating whether the routes are viable; (D) evaluations of the size of the populations that will need evacuation, including populations with special evacuation needs; (E) evaluations and technical help for planning vertical-evacuation structures in communities where models show limited or no ability to evacuate on time, especially areas at risk from near-shore-generated tsunamis; (F) evaluation of at-risk ports and harbors; and (G) evaluation of how tsunami currents affect the foundations of closely spaced coastal high-rise structures; (6) activities promoting preparedness in at-risk ports and harbors, including— (A) evaluating and recommending procedures for ports and harbors during a distant or near-field tsunami; and (B) reviewing readiness, response, and communication strategies to ensure coordination and data sharing with the Coast Guard; (7) activities supporting community-based outreach and education programs that ensure community readiness and resilience, including— (A) developing, carrying out, and assessing technical-training and public-education programs, including programs addressing the unique characteristics of distant and near-field tsunamis; (B) developing decision-support tools; (C) incorporating social-science research into community-readiness and resilience efforts; and (D) developing evidence-based education guidelines; and (8) distributing guidelines and standards for community-planning, education, and training products, programs, and tools, including— (A) standards for— (i) mapping products; (ii) inundation models; and (iii) effective emergency exercises; and (B) recommended guidance for tsunami-warning, evacuation, and response procedures at at-risk ports and harbors, coordinated with the Coast Guard and FEMA. (d) In addition to subsection (c) activities, the program may include— (1) multidisciplinary vulnerability-assessment research, education, and training to help integrate risk-management and resilience goals with community-development planning and policies; (2) risk-management training for local officials and community organizations to improve understanding and preparedness; (3) planning and carrying out, with FEMA, interagency and Federal, State, tribal, and territorial intergovernmental tsunami-response exercises in high-risk areas; (4) practical applications of existing or emerging technologies, such as modeling, remote sensing, geospatial technology, engineering, and observing systems. This may include integrating tsunami sensors into Federal and commercial submarine telecommunication cables if practicable; (5) risk-management, risk-assessment, and resilience data and information services, including— (A) access to data and products from observing and detection systems; and (B) developing and maintaining new integrated data products supporting risk-management, risk-assessment, and resilience programs; and (6) risk-notification systems that coordinate with and build on existing systems and actively involve decisionmakers, State, local, tribal, and territorial governments and agencies, business communities, nongovernmental organizations, and the media. (e) Establishing national standards for inundation models under this section does not stop States, territories, tribes, or local governments from designating additional areas as at risk based on knowledge of local conditions. (f) Nothing in this chapter may be interpreted as establishing new regulatory authority for any Federal agency. The section does not define terms such as "at-risk", "near-field tsunami", or "critical infrastructure".