H.R. 3168 — National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program Reauthorization Act of 2025

This section revises the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP)—which coordinates federal efforts to reduce earthquake losses through research, standards, and implementation—as follows: (1) In program activities, adds Tribal governments to those promoting hazards reduction measures; expands covered activities to planning, designing, constructing, evaluating, and retrofitting buildings, structures, and lifeline infrastructure (from planning and constructing); requires standards, guidelines, voluntary standards, guidelines, and consensus codes including post-earthquake recovery-based performance objectives addressing reoccupancy and downtime for community-prioritized buildings, structures, and lifeline services; adds functional recovery and other hazards reduction topics to the repository of seismic risk and community resilience information (from seismic risk, community resilience, and hazards reduction); and requires publishing and maintaining seismic hazard maps including tsunami susceptibility in coordination with the National Tsunami Hazards Mitigation Program (from publishing maps of active faults, folds, liquefaction susceptibility, earthquake-induced landslide susceptibility, and other seismically induced hazards). (2) Enhances Interagency Coordinating Committee duties to include associated secondary hazards and coordination with the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on timely broadcasting of earthquake early warning system alerts. (3) Corrects a cross-reference in the biennial report requirement from paragraph (3)(D)(i)(I) to (3)(D)(ii)(I). (4) Revises the Advisory Committee to include the Chair of the Scientific Earthquake Studies Advisory Committee and Tribal governments (from state and local governments). (5) Expands U.S. Geological Survey responsibilities to include coordination with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency on oceanic earthquakes and tsunamis; consultation with the FCC Chair to ensure rapid, reliable, multilingual earthquake alerts and early warnings; expansion of the earthquake early warning system to additional high-risk areas with improved detection; coordination with state and Tribal governments on early warning improvements; issuance of aftershock forecasts; and addition of FCC Chair to existing coordination and map-related duties, plus maps of natural hazards associated with earthquakes.

This section authorizes appropriations of $83,403,000 for each of FY2026 through FY2030 under the Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977 for the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), of which not less than $30,000,000 shall be made available in each fiscal year for completion of the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) established under section 13 of the Act. (The ANSS is a USGS-operated network of instrumentation for real-time seismic monitoring.)