Land use
Many plans for hazard resilience will include changing or restricting the use of some land in a region. In many places, the land involved is small areas with poor soil, flood plains, or unstable slopes. Communities must decide the trade-offs between developing the land and costly mitigation, or preventing certain development to improve overall safety.
Building codes save lives
Most communities have adopted minimum standards of construction. Some regions of the country include materials and designs to prevent structural collapse during hazards like earthquakes and hurricanes. Building codes are geared toward life safety and provide a minimum level of protection so occupants can safely exit a building.
The codes, however, do not generally limit damage and economic loss, which can be critical to a community's or a businesses economic survival. Performance-based design steps beyond the code and allows building owners to consider a life-safety, operational, or fully operational earthquake performance level for their building.
Maffei, J. 1998. Mitigating the Risk: Engineers and Builders. Degenkolb Engineers. Earthquake Insurance: Public Policy Perspectives from the Western United States Earthquake Insurance Summit, Western States Seismic Policy Council.
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Intergovermental cooperation
Sometimes natural hazards do not respect political boundaries, so hazard mitigation cannot be effective without cooperative intergovernmental coordination. [Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) is an example of an intergovernmental effort to coordinate hazard mitigation the Bay area of northern California.]
Incentives
History has shown that earthquake risk mitigation will not occur widely without incentives or mandates (Maffei, 1998).
Linking research to practice
Big time gaps exist between the generation of knowledge concerning hazard mitigation and actual implementation in communities.
In many cases, more technical research is not a complete answer. We know we have big problems. We know how to reduce risk for many situation. The bottom line is figuring out a way to apply what we know make the risks lower. This requires technical and social science experts working together for the biggest gain.
Mileti, D. 1999. Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the United States, Joseph Henry Press.
Next: Hazard Monitoring
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