U.S. Tsunami Preparedness: NOAA Has Expanded Its Tsunami Programs, but Improved Planning Could Enhance Effectiveness
Released: 2010-04-28T00:00:00

Letter

Background

A tsunami is a series of ocean waves typically generated by an underwater earthquake. The size of the resulting tsunami depends on a complex set of factors, including the earthquake’s magnitude, its depth below the ocean floor, depth of the overlying water, type and amount of seafloor movement, and energy released. A tsunami wave may be very small in the deep ocean, but as it approaches land, it can increase to tens of feet in height and reach shore as a fast-moving wall of turbulent water. Tsunamis can be classified as local or distant. A tsunami generated by an earthquake off the coast of Alaska would be considered a local tsunami for that state’s coastal areas, striking within minutes of the event, while the same event would be considered a distant tsunami for the coast of Washington, which would not likely be hit until 3 or more hours later. Both types of tsunami pose an inundation threat to low-lying coastal communities from multiple destructive waves that can penetrate far inland. Local tsunamis pose particular emergency preparedness challenges because there may not be enough time to sound a warning. In this situation, public education and outreach can save lives by teaching the community to recognize the emergency and move immediately to higher ground.

The process that the tsunami warning centers use to detect potential tsunamis and issue warnings involves several steps. The warning centers first monitor and evaluate data from seismic networks, and if a tsunami is likely, they transmit a tsunami warning message to NOAA’s weather- forecasting offices and state emergency management centers, among others. The warning centers also monitor coastal water-level data, as well as data from NOAA’s network of Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) detection buoys, to determine if a tsunami has actually been generated and, if not, to cancel any warning (see fig. 1). NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) conducted the research and developed the DART buoys and conducts other research in support of the Tsunami Program, such as the development of tsunami inundation forecast models for at-risk locations. Tsunami forecast models are used by scientists at the warning centers and the research laboratory to help estimate the size of the expected waves and their potential impact on coastal areas. For example, after a massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Chile in February 2010, NOAA scientists initially warned that tsunami waves of about 8 feet could strike Hawaii, but as the tsunami moved across the Pacific, the forecast models helped to more accurately predict the approximately 3-foot tsunami waves that actually struck the islands more than 12 hours after the earthquake.

NOAA allocates its annual appropriations and other funds to three main categories of activities in its Tsunami Program: warning: including activities pertaining to tsunami warning centers, DART buoys, seismic and sea-level monitoring networks, and tsunami data management; mitigation: including activities pertaining to NTHMP, TsunamiReady, and the International Tsunami Information Center; and research: including activities conducted by PMEL and the National Data Buoy Center.

From fiscal year 1997 through fiscal year 2004, NOAA’s allocations to fund tsunami activities remained fairly constant, ranging from about $5 million to $10 million. After the Indian Ocean tsunami, funding increased significantly, from about $27 million in fiscal year 2005 to $42 million in fiscal year 2009 (see fig. 2).

While funding levels generally increased from fiscal year 1997 through fiscal year 2009 for all three categories of tsunami-related activities, according to NOAA officials, the proportion allocated to warning increased from about 40 percent from fiscal year 1997 through fiscal year 2004 to approximately 70 percent of total program funding from fiscal year 2005 through fiscal year 2009 (see fig. 3). In comparison, the proportion allocated to mitigation decreased from about 50 percent from fiscal year 1997 through fiscal year 2004 to approximately 30 percent of total funding from fiscal year 2005 through fiscal year 2009, and the proportion of research funding remained relatively constant, at about 6 to 10 percent of the total.

Starting in fiscal year 2009, funding for the Tsunami Program—including all three categories of tsunami-related activity—received a significant boost from the proceeds of the Federal Communication Commission’s auctioning of the broadcast frequency spectrum previously devoted to carrying analog television signals. The auction proceeds are to provide a total of about $50 million to the program through fiscal year 2012, when this funding will expire. In fiscal year 2009, spectrum auction funding provided $13.7 million, which amounted to 32 percent of the $42 million of total Tsunami Program funding for the year. The program also benefits from significant in-kind support and resources, such as data from seismic and water-level monitors operated by other agencies or nations; NOAA has not estimated the monetary value of this support.

NOAA Followed Key Planning Practices and Generally Included Critical Components in Developing Its Tsunami Programs’ Strategic Plans

The planning processes NOAA used to develop its Tsunami Program and NTHMP strategic plans followed the three key practices leading organizations use to create effective strategic plans. The plans also generally include the critical components of effective plans—such as mission statements and long-term goals—and are closely linked through their goals and strategies, but some components of the plans have not been fully developed.

NOAA Followed Key Planning Practices to Develop Its Strategic Plans

In our prior work, we identified three key practices that were critical for leading organizations to follow in the creation of effective strategic plans: Involving stakeholders, such as federal agencies, state governments, or others, in defining the mission and desired outcomes helps ensure that their expectations and interests are met and that resources and efforts are targeted at the program’s highest priorities.

Assessing external and internal forces helps managers anticipate future challenges and make adjustments before potential problems become crises. For example, external forces—such as emerging technological trends and new statutory requirements—and internal forces—such as culture, management practices, and business processes—may influence the program’s ability to achieve its goals.

Aligning program activities to support mission-related outcomes helps ensure that programs effectively and efficiently produce services that meet customers’ needs and stakeholders’ interests. Assessing the extent to which a program’s activities, processes, and resources contribute to meeting its mission and desired outcomes can identify inadequate or obsolete organizational structures that need to be changed.

NOAA adopted strategic plans in 2008 for the Tsunami Program and in 2009 for NTHMP. We found that NOAA’s planning process for developing these plans included the three key practices. Specifically, to develop the Tsunami Program’s strategic plan, NOAA assembled a planning committee of relevant agency officials, who drafted the plan, and then involved stakeholders, including NTHMP members, by giving them the opportunity to review and comment on the draft plan. The planning committee assessed the external and internal forces relevant to the program by analyzing the program’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. For example, the planning committee determined that the tsunami warning centers were issuing confusing information statements during events, an internal weakness that threatened its warning mission. In addition, as the planning committee developed the Tsunami Program’s strategic plan, NOAA officials aligned the program’s structure to meet the purpose of the program as provided in the Tsunami Warning and Education Act and to ensure that its activities supported this mission. For example, the plan identifies four areas of responsibility in the Tsunami Program that align with the main sections of the act: (1) tsunami forecasting and warning, (2) National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, (3) tsunami research, and (4) global tsunami warning and mitigation.

Likewise, when developing the NTHMP’s strategic plan, NOAA assembled a planning committee of stakeholders and then shared a draft of the strategic plan with all NTHMP members to incorporate their comments, helping to ensure that their interests and expectations were met. According to NOAA officials, the planning committee assessed the external and internal forces potentially affecting the NTHMP, as was done for the Tsunami Program. For example, the analysis identified certain NTHMP goals that depended on external forces, such as state and local agencies, and were therefore beyond the program’s full control. Finally, NTHMP’s strategic plan was organized to align its goals and strategies with key components of the program as identified in the Tsunami Warning and Education Act, specifically, to coordinate warning activities, promote and improve community education and mitigation, and improve the quality and extent of inundation modeling and mapping.

NOAA’s Tsunami Strategic Plans Generally Include Critical Components, but Some Are Missing or Incomplete

Our past work has shown that effective strategic plans should include six critical components: A comprehensive mission statement that explains why a program exists and tells what it does.

Long-term goals and objectives that specify how an agency will carry out its mission and explain what results are expected from the program.

Strategies to achieve the goals and objectives that are specific enough to allow an assessment of whether they will help achieve those goals. For example, strategies may describe the processes, skills, technologies, and resources needed to achieve a program’s goals and objectives.

A description of how performance measures will be used to assess progress toward long-term goals, including (1) the specific activities within the program that will be assessed for performance and (2) the target level of performance to be achieved for each measure.

The identification of external factors that could significantly affect achievement of the strategic goals, such as economic trends or actions by Congress, state and federal agencies, or other entities. Assessing external factors helps agencies evaluate the likelihood of achieving strategic goals that depend on the actions of others.

A description of how program evaluations are to be used to establish or revise strategic goals and a schedule of future planned evaluations.

We found that the Tsunami Program and NTHMP strategic plans generally include most of the critical components of effective strategic plans. Specifically, for the Tsunami Program’s strategic plan, we found that it identifies the program’s mission, nine long-term goals for meeting its mission, strategies to achieve most of the goals, activities to implement the strategies, and some performance measures to assess progress. Additionally, during the planning process, the Tsunami Program’s strategic planning team identified factors external to the program that could significantly affect achievement of the strategic goals. For example, the planning committee identified current support from the U.S. Geological Survey, which provides seismic data, as one external factor that, if changed, could affect the program’s ability to achieve its goals. Also, the planning committee reviewed relevant program evaluations, such as our 2006 report, to incorporate these findings and recommendations into the strategic plan.

Nevertheless, some key components of the Tsunami Program’s strategic plan are not fully developed. For example, although the plan identifies nine long-term goals, it does not identify strategies, performance measures, or the agency offices responsible for achieving the strategies for three of the goals. These three goals are (1) provide technical assistance, training, and capacity development both at global and regional levels, supporting a fully operational tsunami warning system; (2) integrate with other relevant national, regional, and global ocean and coastal observation, warning, mitigation, and risk management systems; and (3) develop effective networks to disseminate tsunami information to the public through partnerships with formal and informal education entities. Furthermore, while the strategic plan lists performance measures for six goals that the program aims to achieve from 2008 to 2017, some are vague or lack a specific date for completion. For example, “reduce the cost for the DART network operation and maintenance” is one of the performance measures. This measure may not be a useful one, however, for the goal of having timely and accurate tsunami forecast and warning products because the measure lacks a specific target for cost reduction and a date for achieving it. The Tsunami Program manager acknowledged these limitations in the strategic plan but said that although the plan did not contain strategies and performance measures for the three goals, the planning committee had developed an action plan, separate from the strategic plan, which identified specific tasks to complete each year to help reach the goals. The program manager also told us that the planning committee was hampered in its efforts to identify performance measures for the three goals because they were very general, and no performance data existed to provide a baseline against which to measure progress.

Similarly, we found that NOAA also used a planning committee to create a strategic plan for the NTHMP that includes nearly all the critical components of an effective plan. For example, to achieve NTHMP’s mission “to reduce loss of life and property damage from tsunamis,” the strategic plan identifies eight long-term goals. For most of these goals, the plan identifies several strategies and performance measures. For example, for the goal of having “tsunami inundation maps that support informed decision making in tsunami-threatened communities,” the strategic plan lists several strategies designed to help achieve the goal, one of which is to “develop guidelines for tsunami inundation maps.” The plan also names NTHMP’s Mapping and Modeling Subcommittee as responsible for executing the strategy. Next, the plan identifies a performance measure for this strategy—that “new NTHMP-funded maps…will meet established guidelines by 2012”—so that program officials can assess progress toward implementation. The NTHMP strategic planning committee also considered external factors and reviewed program evaluations as it developed the program’s strategic plan, according to NOAA officials. For example, as it developed the plan, the planning committee took into account the recommendations of several reviews, including our 2006 report and a 2005 National Science and Technology Council report on reducing tsunami risk in the United States. We also found that the Tsunami Program and NTHMP strategic plans are closely linked to each other in that some of the Tsunami Program’s goals and strategies are actually met through NTHMP’s actions. For example, the Tsunami Program identifies NTHMP as one of five key strategies to achieve its own goals.

Nevertheless, as with the Tsunami Program’s strategic plan, we found that some of the components of NTHMP’s strategic plan are missing or not fully developed. For example, although the plan identifies eight long-term goals, it does not identify performance measures, milestones, or who is responsible for achieving the goal of developing understandable and effective tsunami warning center communications, such as tsunami warning messages for communities. According to the Tsunami Program manager, the NTHMP planning committee did not establish performance measures or milestones because achieving this goal is actually the responsibility of the warning centers, with guidance from NTHMP. In addition, the NTHMP strategic plan contains a goal of establishing more tsunami-resilient communities and establishes a performance measure of increasing the number of TsunamiReady communities to 105 by 2013. The plan does not, however, contain any specific strategies for increasing the number of communities. The TsunamiReady program manager told us that the NTHMP plans to develop goals, strategies, and performance measures for the TsunamiReady program in 2013, after new program recognition guidelines are issued.

Table 1 summarizes our analysis of the extent to which the Tsunami Program and NTHMP plans include the critical components of strategic plans.

NOAA Has Expanded and Strengthened Its Tsunami Programs, but Some Challenges Remain

Since our 2006 report, NOAA has made progress in expanding and strengthening its tsunami warning and mitigation capabilities, but maintaining a reliable DART detection buoy network and increasing community participation in the TsunamiReady program have proven to be challenging. In addition, NOAA’s initial failure to follow its agencywide research transition policy contributed to about a 2-year delay in moving a new tsunami forecast system from research to application in the warning centers, and NOAA has not complied with the Tsunami Warning and Education Act’s requirement that it develop and execute a plan for the transfer of technology from ongoing research into the tsunami forecasting and warning program.

NOAA Has Strengthened Its Tsunami Warning Capabilities While Efforts to Improve Reliability and Reduce the Costs of Its DART Detection Buoy Network Continue

In 2006, NOAA strengthened its tsunami warning capabilities by expanding the operating hours and geographic areas of responsibility for both of its tsunami warning centers. Before the strengthening effort, each of the warning centers operated with staff on site 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, with personnel on standby the remainder of the time. NOAA has since increased staffing levels to operate the warning centers with staff on site 24 hours, 7 days a week. Additionally, NOAA expanded the geographic area for which each warning center is responsible. As shown in figure 4, the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center is responsible for warning Alaska and coastal states of the U.S. mainland, as well as Canada, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center is responsible for warning Hawaii and U.S. territories in the Pacific Ocean, as well as over 90 countries across the Pacific, Indian, and Caribbean basins.

To improve its ability to detect tsunamis, NOAA upgraded and expanded its observational networks for monitoring seismic activity and changes in coastal water levels, and it deployed additional DART buoys to detect deep-ocean tsunami waves far from shore. Since 2005, NOAA has installed new seismic stations in Hawaii and Alaska and integrated its stations with stations maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey, which has installed new stations in the Caribbean. Additional enhancements to other seismic monitoring stations operated by the U.S. Geological Survey in partnership with the National Science Foundation were completed to increase the number of stations capable of transmitting seismic data during an event. In the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, NOAA also added 16 new water-level monitoring stations and upgraded 33 existing stations to support tsunami detection. The new and upgraded water-level stations are now capable of providing data on changes in water level to the warning centers faster and more often to confirm whether a seismic event has actually generated a tsunami. Additionally, in March 2008, NOAA completed its 3-year project to expand the network of DART detection buoys from 6 to 39 buoys. These buoys are strategically deployed across the Pacific, Atlantic, and Caribbean basins, as shown in figure 5, in regions with a history of generating tsunamis.

To enhance its tsunami forecasting capabilities, NOAA began implementing in 2006 a new tsunami forecasting system developed by PMEL, called the Short-term Inundation Forecasting for Tsunamis (SIFT), which uses data from the DART detection buoys. NOAA’s tsunami warning centers have been relying on a model that uses location and magnitude data from previous earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean to predict whether a seismic event could generate a tsunami, the potential wave heights, and possible impact areas. The new forecast system will supplement the existing model by providing estimates of additional tsunami characteristics, such as current velocities and inundation levels, for 75 specific coastal locations. Additionally, the SIFT system uses deep-ocean tsunami wave measurements to produce, before the wave reaches shore, a more precise forecast than the existing model’s. DART buoys provide data the SIFT system needs by detecting small changes in deep-ocean waves and quickly transmitting these data to the warning centers. Although warning center officials expressed concerns to us about SIFT’s complexity and the staff time needed to operate the system during an event, they acknowledged that it provides a more accurate forecast than the existing model. NOAA is currently testing the SIFT system for use in the tsunami warning centers.

Collectively, NOAA’s data indicate that its efforts have enhanced its tsunami detection capabilities and contributed to more accurate and timely warnings. For example, NOAA’s data indicate that the tsunami warning centers have a 100 percent detection rate for tsunamis generated within their areas of responsibility since fiscal year 2005. NOAA has also reduced the time needed after a seismic event for the warning centers to issue a warning message. For example, the time needed for the warning centers to issue a message for a distantly generated tsunami has been reduced from an average of 24 minutes in fiscal year 2005 to 15.7 minutes in fiscal year 2009, and the time needed for a local event has been reduced from an average of 9.9 minutes in fiscal year 2005 to 5.8 minutes in fiscal year 2009. The warning centers have likewise made progress reducing false alarms, both in terms of reducing the extent of areas subject to a tsunami warning, as well as shortening the time that areas remain under a warning. For example, in fiscal year 2009, NOAA reduced the average time from initial warning to cancellation to about 90 minutes, surpassing its fiscal year 2013 goal of reducing the time that areas remain under warning from 3 hours to less than 2 hours.

While NOAA has improved its tsunami warning capabilities, maintaining the reliability of the DART detection buoys has been challenging and costly. The Tsunami Warning and Education Act requires NOAA, through the National Weather Service, to ensure that maintaining operational tsunami detection equipment is the Tsunami Program’s highest priority. When DART buoys are out of service, they cannot detect tsunamis or transmit data to the tsunami warning centers. According to NOAA records on DART buoy performance from July 2006 to August 2009, data were available from the buoys, on average, about 84 percent of the time, and according to officials, about one or two buoy outages occurred per month. In general, data availability goes down and the number of buoy outages goes up during the winter months, when maintenance is virtually impossible because of harsh ocean conditions. The situation reverses during the spring and summer months, when NOAA runs its scheduled buoy maintenance cruise. According to data from NOAA’s National Data Buoy Center, which operates and maintains the DART buoy network, failure of mooring lines accounted for almost 60 percent of DART buoy outages from December 2005 to November 2009. Center officials told us that mooring lines fail for a variety of reasons, including ship collisions and vessels that tie up to a buoy. NOAA officials told us they are working to resolve these problems as part of the agency’s goal of having data from its three observational networks available at least 90 percent of the time by fiscal year 2013. Meanwhile, the costs of operating and maintaining the DART detection buoy network have been significant. For example, in fiscal year 2009, NOAA allocated nearly $12 million—about 28 percent of NOAA’s total tsunami budget—to DART operation and maintenance. NOAA’s research program and the National Data Buoy Center are exploring ways to reduce these costs by improving DART buoy reliability—for example, by identifying more durable materials for the mooring line and exploring alternative configurations for anchoring the buoys. Moving some DART stations to less hostile locations with reduced ocean currents and vessel traffic is also being assessed in an effort to improve reliability.

NOAA Has Expanded and Reorganized Its Hazard Mitigation Program, but Community Participation in TsunamiReady Remains Limited

To improve its mitigation capabilities, NOAA significantly expanded NTHMP’s membership and reorganized the program to better focus its activities toward achieving tsunami mitigation goals. In 2005, NOAA expanded NTHMP membership from five Pacific Coast states into a nationwide program including all 29 at-risk coastal U.S. states and territories. NOAA then restructured the NTHMP in 2007 to better meet the needs of the expanded program. As a result of the restructuring, the program consists of an overarching coordinating committee, along with a subcommittee to manage program efforts for key areas of mitigation activity: warning coordination, mapping and modeling, and mitigation and education. Comprising representatives from federal, state, and territory agencies, the coordinating committee assists NOAA in overall program implementation, including recommending how funds are to be allocated and supporting periodic reviews to assess the program’s strengths and weaknesses. NOAA also changed the previous annual contracting process for funding mitigation projects—in which the original five member states decided among themselves how to divide the money—to a competitive grant process in 2008. Under the new process, NTHMP members seeking funding must submit proposals for mitigation projects to a panel of subject-matter experts for evaluation, according to an established set of criteria, before recommending to NOAA which projects should be funded. Although the original five member states were initially concerned that NTHMP expansion could divert much-needed mitigation resources away from high-risk areas in those states, officials we spoke with from these states generally agreed that management of the program had improved and available resources had increased for their states.

While NOAA has also taken steps to strengthen its TsunamiReady program, increasing community participation in this voluntary program has been challenging. The number of communities recognized as TsunamiReady has increased from 27 (at the time of our 2006 report) to 74 communities located in 10 states, Puerto Rico, and the Pacific territories, as of February 2010. Despite this progress, overall community participation remains relatively low. For example, the 74 communities that NOAA has recognized as TsunamiReady account for less than 10 percent of the more than 760 communities identified as at risk for a tsunami (see table 2).

Communities along the Pacific Coast and in the Caribbean, where tsunami hazard is highest, have been the most active in seeking TsunamiReady recognition, while those in other areas, such as the East and Gulf Coasts, have been less active in participating in the program. For example, only 2 of 64 at-risk Gulf Coast communities and only 13 of 312 at-risk East Coast communities have been recognized as TsunamiReady. NOAA program staff and state and local emergency management officials offered a number of reasons for this apparent lack of interest in TsunamiReady recognition by the East and Gulf Coast communities, including limited information on the extent of the tsunami hazard; competing priorities for time and resources to plan for and respond to more common events, such as hurricanes; and costs to meet the recognition requirements. Additionally, some officials told us that some communities have been reluctant to pursue the designation because they believe it might draw undue attention to the tsunami hazard and potentially deter tourists from visiting their communities.

NOAA has not conducted a formal assessment to identify barriers to or possible incentives for participating in the TsunamiReady program, as we recommended in 2006. Instead, in part on the basis of recommendations from a 2007 NTHMP review of the program and feedback from a series of NTHMP meetings and local community workshops, NOAA decided to focus its efforts on revising the program’s recognition guidelines. Existing TsunamiReady guidelines have emphasized warning and preparedness efforts. These guidelines require TsunamiReady communities to establish a 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center and have more than one means of receiving tsunami warnings and alerting the public; to promote public readiness through community education; and to develop a formal tsunami plan, including plans for emergency exercises. According to a program official, revised guidelines under development are intended to take a more comprehensive approach and to address all aspects of emergency management planning: mitigation, preparedness, warning, response, and recovery. NOAA officials told us that over the next 2 years, they plan to work with social scientists to conduct a survey to establish a baseline of tsunami preparedness in at-risk coastal communities, to conduct pilot projects in selected communities to obtain feedback on and test implementation of the revised guidelines, and to conduct internal and external reviews of the revised guidelines. NOAA then plans to further revise the guidelines to address issues identified through these efforts before submitting them to the NTHMP coordinating committee for its approval. NOAA anticipates implementing the new TsunamiReady recognition guidelines nationwide sometime in 2012. Although developing new guidelines may help strengthen the TsunamiReady program, we continue to believe that it does not substitute for a comprehensive assessment to determine what potential barriers may be inhibiting community participation and that NOAA should conduct such an assessment.

NOAA’s Failure to Follow Its Research Transition Policy Contributed to Delays in Implementing a New Tsunami Forecasting System

Since 2006, NOAA has been transitioning the SIFT tsunami forecasting system from its developer, PMEL, to application at the tsunami warning centers. In large part because the laboratory and Tsunami Program officials did not follow NOAA’s agencywide policy and implementation procedures for the transition of new technologies from research to application, numerous modifications were needed to make the system usable by the warning centers, leading to about a 2-year delay in implementation. The agency’s policy and procedures describe a four-step process for systematically reviewing all research projects and, if appropriate, moving them to application. This process includes checkpoints for NOAA officials to ensure that all activities have been successfully completed before a research project can proceed to the next step (see fig. 6).

When PMEL began the SIFT transition, it prepared an initial transition plan in 2006. This plan did not follow NOAA’s transition policy, however, and as a result, did not undergo checkpoint reviews or contain all of the plan elements required by NOAA’s policy and implementation procedures. Tsunami Program and PMEL officials told us they did not realize that this policy applied to the transition of relatively small research efforts like the SIFT system, which the officials said accounted for their failure to follow NOAA’s transition policy. Although a transition team consisting of officials from the warning centers and PMEL was assembled, the warning center officials were not actively involved in developing the transition plan, which should identify requirements for the new technology and criteria it must meet to be implemented, among other things. Thus, the 2006 transition plan did not identify requirements for the SIFT system or performance measures to enable PMEL and the warning centers to test and evaluate the system. These shortcomings left the warning centers with no formal mechanism to provide input into the transition process or to evaluate the SIFT system before accepting it for implementation. As a result, numerous modifications to the system were needed to make it practical for use after the warning centers received it.

In 2008, however, to revise the transition plan and accelerate the system’s implementation, NOAA’s Tsunami Program manager collaborated with staff from PMEL and the warning centers and established a SIFT transition team with more involvement from the warning centers. According to NOAA officials, the transition team completed a revised plan in June 2009 that meets the requirements of NOAA’s research transition policy and implementation procedures, such as defining system requirements and performance measures. Additionally, NOAA officials performed a checkpoint review of the transition. As a result of these changes, according to officials at PMEL and the warning centers, communication between them has improved, and NOAA is closer to implementing the SIFT system in the centers.

Moreover, NOAA has not complied with the Tsunami Warning and Education Act’s requirement that it, through the National Weather Service, develop and execute a plan for the transfer of technology from ongoing research into the tsunami forecasting and warning program. Although NOAA has developed a specific transition plan for the SIFT system, this transition plan does not meet the act’s requirement because it does not generally address how other research should undergo transition. In response, NOAA officials told us they believe that NOAA’s general transition policy and implementation procedures, along with individual transition plans for selected projects, satisfy its planning obligations under the act. But when we first asked program officials about the required tsunami research transition plan, they told us they did not have one and that they were unfamiliar with the act’s requirement. Because NOAA’s existing policy and procedures, which predated the act, do not provide a plan specifically for the transfer of tsunami research into the Tsunami Program, and because NOAA has not created a separate plan for the transfer of tsunami research, we believe that NOAA has not fully complied with the act’s requirement for a transition plan for tsunami research.

Conclusions

NOAA and its partners have taken important initial steps toward implementing effective, results-oriented management by creating strategic plans for the Tsunami Program and NTHMP. By following the key practices we and leading organizations have identified for developing strategic plans and generally including the critical components of effective plans—such as long-term goals and strategies to achieve them—NOAA has established a solid foundation for managing its programs. Nevertheless, because NOAA has not identified strategies or performance measures for some goals, it is not clear how the agency intends to pursue these goals or how it will measure its progress toward achieving them. In this regard, identifying barriers to participation, as we previously recommended, and developing strategies for achieving the goal of expanding TsunamiReady program participation could help address the low participation rate in this community preparedness program. In addition, both the warning and mitigation components of NOAA’s programs can benefit greatly from the results of tsunami-related research. As demonstrated by the transition of SIFT from research to application in the warning centers, however, the failure to plan properly can result in the need for multiple modifications to a system to make it usable, leading to delays in implementing a promising new technology. Until NOAA develops a plan specifically for the transition of technology from research to application in the Tsunami Program, it will not be in compliance with the requirement of the Tsunami Warning and Education Act, and the potential persists for delays like those experienced in the SIFT transition.

Recommendations for Executive Action

To improve national tsunami preparedness and ensure that NOAA fulfills its responsibilities under the Tsunami Warning and Education Act, we are recommending that the Secretary of Commerce direct the Administrator of NOAA to take the following two actions: Revise the Tsunami Program’s and NTHMP’s strategic plans to ensure that all the components are fully developed, in particular, that they include effective strategies and performance measures for all goals, including those for the TsunamiReady program.

Develop a transition plan for tsunami research, as required by the Tsunami Warning and Education Act. The plan should incorporate lessons learned from the transition of the SIFT tsunami forecasting system.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

We provided a copy of our draft report to the Department of Commerce for review and comment. The Department provided us NOAA’s comments on the draft report, in which NOAA said that the report captures and addresses the major elements of the Tsunami Program and acknowledges the involvement and roles of all levels of government. NOAA also agreed with our two recommendations. NOAA said that it will initiate revisions to the Tsunami Program’s and NTHMP’s strategic plans upon receipt of the National Academy of Sciences’ report on the Tsunami Program expected in the summer of 2010. NOAA also said that it will initiate the development of a Tsunami Program transition plan for tsunami research in the summer of 2010 in coordination with its research partners. NOAA also provided technical comments that we incorporated into the report as appropriate. NOAA’s comments are presented in appendix I.

We are sending copies of this report to the appropriate congressional committees, Secretary of Commerce, Administrator of NOAA, and other interested parties. In addition, this report will be available at no charge on the GAO Web site at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff members have any questions about this report, please contact me at (202) 512-3841 or mittala@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to this report are listed in appendix II.

Appendix I: Comments from the Department of Commerce

Appendix II: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

Staff Acknowledgments

In addition to the contact named above, Stephen D. Secrist, Assistant Director; Elizabeth R. Beardsley; Ellen W. Chu; Brad C. Dobbins; Wyatt R. Hundrup; Katherine Killebrew; Michael J. Meleady; and Katherine M. Raheb made key contributions to this report.