Citation

Hooke WH. Nat. Hazards Rev. 2000; 1(1): 2-9.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, American Society of Civil Engineers)

DOI

10.1061/(ASCE)1527-6988(2000)1:1(2)

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The United Nations' International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction has now concluded. The time has come to take stock. Decade framers set forth 3 targets for each nation: hazard identification and risk assessment; a mitigation strategy, couched in terms of plans for sustainable development; and improved warning and dissemination. By this measure, the U.S. experience was moderately successful. Public awareness of natural hazards is growing rapidly. Correspondingly, national policies toward natural disasters are shifting dramatically; aligning better with the nature of the problem as experts currently understand it. The 1990s saw natural hazards lose much of the element of surprise; today, natural extremes are forecast and their threats anticipated more successfully than ever before. However, despite this progress, losses in the U.S. due to natural disasters continued to rise sharply during the decade. More ominously, the nature and profile of disasters and their losses appear to be mutating in response to rapid societal change. Advances in our understanding of the geophysical, engineering, and societal causes of citizens are no safer they than were a decade ago. Local and regional economies are proving too vulnerable to disruption; even the national economy may be significantly affected under some scenarios. Major obstacles will continue to challenge U.S. efforts to reduce natural disasters in the decades ahead.