Learn WTAD 2025
Theme of the day: Be Tsunami Ready: Invest in Tsunami Preparedness
The World Tsunami Awareness Day 2025 Campaign is dedicated to advancing tsunami resilience through alignment with the Tsunami Ready Programme, a global initiative aimed at strengthening community resilience through awareness and preparedness strategies.
This campaign seeks to highlight the importance of proactive measures in mitigating tsunami risks, fostering collaboration among all stakeholders – governments, academia, local leaders, and the public to enhance tsunami preparedness.
The theme is to be aligned with the theme of the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, on 13 October, and the theme of the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development “Financing Our Future” that happened on 30 June.
The Tsunami Ready Programme
The Tsunami Ready Programme lead by UNESCO-IOC. It is a voluntary, performance-based recognition initiative that promotes comprehensive tsunami preparedness at the community level. It encourages coastal communities to adopt mitigation measures that align with a standardized set of indicators. The programme contributes significantly to achieving the goal of the Sendai Framework of reducing disaster losses by promoting resilience building measures that protect lives, livelihoods, and economies from the devastating impacts of tsunamis from all sources.
While being recognized as Tsunami Ready does not guarantee immunity from tsunami impacts, it signifies that a community has taken essential steps to minimize potential losses and protect its residents.
Play and learn to stop disasters
We are not powerless against tsunami. Instead, tsunami preparedness acts as both a public good and a sound economic strategy, through protecting lives and development gains. Use the Stop Disasters game this World Tsunami Awareness Day to see firsthand the actions needed to protect lives and development gains. In the tsunami hazard scenario, use the given time and budget to best protect your coastline, and discover the power we have to be tsunami ready.
Test your strategy in the Stop Disasters tsunami scenario: plan, protect, and prepare a resilient village before disaster strikes!
Facts and figures
1) There is a 4 to 36 times return on investment in early warning
Global analysis estimates US$4–36 billion in annual benefits for roughly US$1 billion/year invested in modern early warning, including approx. 23,000 lives saved per year. (World Bank)
2) Universal warnings cut losses by up to 20%
Providing universal access to early warnings (for storms, floods, and tsunamis) can reduce asset losses by up to approx. 20%, preventing about US$13 billion in damage annually. Well‑being gains are even more significant at approximately US$22 billion/year. (WMO)
3) Preparedness education and drills save lives: the “Kamaishi Miracle” (2011)
In Kamaishi City (Japan), only 5 of approx. 2,900 elementary and junior‑high students perished when the tsunami triggered by the Great East Japan earthquake hit. No child at school that day died. This remarkable outcome is widely attributed to sustained tsunami education and frequent evacuation drills, which successfully prepared students to evacuate to higher ground. (GFDRR)
4) Public investment buys evacuation time
After 2011, Japan built approximately 395 km of coastal seawalls at a cost of ¥1.35 trillion (US$12.7B) to delay inundation and increase evacuation time – an example of large‑scale, publicly financed risk‑reduction infrastructure. (Reuters)
