Tsunami Ready: Facilitating Community Readiness, an Essential Component of a Tsunami Early Warning System

If communities are not ready to respond to a tsunami and people die, the tsunami warning system will be perceived as having failed. The failure would be non withstanding investments in tsunami research and tsunami observation and warning systems. Despite what many may believe, community preparedness is probably the most challenging (and underfunded) component of an early warning system. What keeps a community from getting ready for a tsunami? Short memory, disbelief, inertia, lack of resources and focus on more recurrent hazards are some of the reasons why people, governments may not take appropriate actions to get ready. The Tsunami Ready Pilot program of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO is a community performance based recognition project for coastal communities interested in strengthening their tsunami preparedness, adapting and adopting good practices to minimize loss of life and property. Ten mitigation, preparedness and response elements are considered in the guidelines that need to be completed by the community seeking recognition by UNESCO/IOC. By providing a list of actions, combined with the recognition of authorities and availability of funding has facilitated and motivated communities to get ready. The Program, which began in the Caribbean, has also been piloted in the Pacific, adapted for the Indian Ocean and under consideration of the Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean. To date, 30 countries around the world are planning or in the process of piloting the program. The implementation of the program has revealed gaps, strengths and challenges in the national and local warning systems. This presentation will review the experience and results of the pilots. During the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) the tsunami community is seeking to increase its tsunami detection and warning capability as well as implementing programs like Tsunami Ready to transform the level of preparedness of coastal communities.