Sponsors (14)
The bill makes detailed, centralized disaster cost and location data publicly available to improve planning, transparency, and research, but creates ongoing funding and maintenance obligations and raises risks that the data could be misused or become outdated if not properly resourced.
State and local emergency planners will get regularly updated, centralized data on billion‑dollar disasters to improve preparedness and recovery planning.
Homeowners and businesses will have transparent cost and location information about major disasters, helping with risk assessment and insurance or mitigation decisions.
Communities (urban and rural) and the public will have access to visual maps and storm trajectories that improve situational awareness and guide resilience and infrastructure investments.
If the database is not regularly updated and well-funded, planners, homeowners, and others will have access to an outdated resource that reduces its usefulness for preparedness and recovery.
Publication of fine‑grained disaster cost and location data could be misinterpreted by insurers or markets, potentially increasing insurance premiums or reducing property values in documented areas.
NOAA will face ongoing administrative and maintenance costs to run and update the database, which could require reallocating agency resources and impose costs on taxpayers or federal employees.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires NOAA to maintain a public, biannually updated online database listing each U.S. billion‑dollar disaster with costs, dates, locations, visuals, and archival access to prior NCEI data.
Introduced September 11, 2025 by Peter Welch · Last progress September 11, 2025
Requires the NOAA Administrator to create and publicly maintain an online database and webpage that lists each U.S. "billion-dollar disaster" each year using NOAA/NCEI data. The database must be updated at least twice a year, include estimated cost, disaster type, location, dates, visual graphs and maps, and archive the previously available NCEI dataset; the Administrator may also include non‑billion‑dollar disasters and collaborate with federal and nonfederal partners.