Commentary on tsunami warning systems and preparedness frameworks for Pacific island communities.
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Commentary on tsunami warning systems and preparedness frameworks for Pacific island communities. Free under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 — no registration required.
Summary of the paper
"When the Ocean Comes Inland" is an ISPI commentary on tsunami preparedness for Pacific Island and Hawaii coastal communities. It opens with the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake, when the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center detected the event and issued warnings across the Pacific basin.
Its argument is that technical warning capability is only part of preparedness. How warnings reach people, and how they turn into evacuation in each community's geographic, social and infrastructure conditions, matters as much.
What the paper finds
- Preparedness is a community and policy problem. The commentary frames tsunami readiness as more than a technical warning question.
- Language affects warning receipt. Many Hawaii residents speak a language other than English at home, including Ilocano, Chuukese and Marshallese, and English-only alerts may not reach them effectively within the short window of a local tsunami.
- Evacuation routes need realistic assumptions. Route capacity analysis should account for road conditions after an earthquake, not just normal traffic.
What it recommends
- Fund multilingual tsunami warning dissemination, including community-level warning networks in Pacific Islander languages.
- Commission evacuation route capacity analysis that accounts for post-seismic road degradation.
- Develop community-based tsunami preparedness programs for Pacific Island diaspora communities in Hawaii.
Who it's for
County and state emergency managers, coastal community leaders, Pacific Islander community organizations, and residents of low-lying coastal areas in Hawaii and the Pacific.
This research connects to the 39 Small Island Developing States worldwide through the Samoa Pathway and BPOA+30 framework. Every ISPI research product carries a mandatory SIDS global bridge per the ISPI Research Architecture.
Further reading
Cite as
Pulley, Warren (2026). When the Ocean Comes Inland: Tsunami Preparedness Policy for Pacific Island and Hawaii Coastal Communities — What the Warning Systems Miss (ISPI CM-09). Island Security Policy Institute, Honolulu. https://ispiglobal.com/papers-landing/cm09-tsunami-preparedness https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23449922
BibTeX
@techreport{ispicm092026,
author = {Pulley, Warren},
title = {When the Ocean Comes Inland: Tsunami Preparedness Policy for Pacific Island and Hawaii Coastal Communities — What the Warning Systems Miss},
institution = {Island Security Policy Institute},
address = {Honolulu, HI},
number = {ISPI CM-09},
year = {2026},
url = {https://ispiglobal.com/papers-landing/cm09-tsunami-preparedness},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23449922}
}Related analysis
AnalysisWorld Tsunami Awareness Day: Tsunami Preparedness for Hawaiʻi and Pacific Island Communities →AnalysisHow to Apply an Island Emergency Management Framework to Your Organization →AnalysisContinuity of Operations (COOP) for Island Local Government: A Step-by-Step Guide and Checklist →PaperCM-08 — BTAM Cultural Calibration for Pacific Islander Communities →PaperCM-10 — Island Wildfire Policy Beyond Maui — A Pacific Perspective →GuideIsland Emergency Management & Preparedness: Research and FAQ →Pulley, Warren. "Tsunami Preparedness in Pacific Island Communities." Island Security Policy Institute, 2026. https://ispiglobal.com/papers-landing/cm09-tsunami-preparedness
