- Author
- Mileti, D. S.
- Title
- Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the United States.
- Coporate
- University of Colorado, Boulder
- Report
- Report, 1999, 16 p.
- Distribution
- For more information contact: National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Ave., N.W., Lockbox 285, Washington, DC 20055. Telephone: 1-800-642-6242 or 202-334-3313, Fax: 202-334-2451, Website: http://www.nap.edu
- Keywords
- disasters | weather effects
- Abstract
- A quarter-century ago geographer Gilbert F. White and sociologist J. Eugene Haas published a pioneering report on the nation's ability to withstand and respond to natural disasters. At that time, research on disasters was dominated by physical scientists and engineers. As White and Haas pointed out in their 'Assessment of Research on Natural Hazards', little attempt had been made to tap the social sciences to better understand the economic, social, and political ramifications of extreme natural events. White and Haas attempted to fill this void. But they also advanced the critical notion that rather than simply picking up the pieces after disasters, the nation could employ better planning, land-use controls, and other preventive and mitigation measures to reduce the toll in the first place. Today, at long last, public and private programs and policies have begun to adopt mitigation as the cornerstone of the nation's approach to addressing natural and technological hazards. The 1975 report also had a profound impact by paving the way for an interdisciplinary approach to research and management, giving birth to a "hazards community" -- people from many fields and agencies who address the myriad aspects of natural disasters. Hazards research now encompasses disciplines such as climatology, economics, engineering, geography, geology, law, meteorology, planning, seismology, and sociology Professionals in those and other fields have continued to investigate how engineering projects, warnings, land-use management, planning for response and recovery insurance, and building codes can help individuals and groups adapt to natural hazards, as well as reduce the resulting deaths, injuries, costs, and social, environmental, and economic disruption. These dedicated people have greatly improved our understanding of the physical processes underlying natural hazards and the complexities of social decision making before, during, and after disasters. Yet troubling questions remain about why more progress has not been made in reducing dollar losses. One central problem is that many of the accepted methods for coping with hazards have been based on the idea that people can use technology to control nature to make themselves safe. What's more, most strategies for managing hazards have followed a traditional planning model: study the problem, implement one solution, and move on to the next problem. This approach casts hazards as static and mitigation as an upward, positive, linear trend. But events during the past quarter-century have shown that natural disasters and the technological hazards that may accompany them are not problems that can be solved in isolation. Rather, they are symptoms of broader and more basic problems. Losses from hazards -- and the fact that the nation cannot seem to reduce them -- result from shortsighted and narrow conceptions of the human relationship to the natural environment.