Increasing Resilience to Natural Hazards: Obstacles and Opportunities for Local Governments Under the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000

摘要

The term natural disaster is a misnomer. As Anna K. Schwab and David J. Brower note in this Article, disasters do not occur naturally, they occur only where humans have placed themselves in the way of natural hazard events. Therefore, decisions about the way human environments are initially constructed can mitigate the effects of natural hazard events. They distinguish between resistance and resilience, explaining that attempts to resist forces of nature by trying to contain or control nature itself have largely been unsuccessful. By contrast, resilience efforts, such as hazard avoidance, environmental preservation, and education and outreach, reduce vulnerability to natural hazard events. The authors explain a range ofresilience techniques and discuss hazard mitigation planning under the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000.