A National Strategy for Natural Disaster Reduction: A Call for Coordination of Disaster Reduction Activities

A need exists to improve the effectiveness of the network of communities, organizations, and agencies that are concerned with reducing the negative impact of natural hazards in the USA. The issue is to find ways to integrate community need assessment, research and development, education and training, policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation to improve practices that reduce vulnerability at the community, regional, and national levels. To this end, we propose to create a disaster reduction network that supports a cycle of development and application activities relating to natural hazards mitigation standards, diffusion of loss reduction practice, and consensus building in communities and in technical and professional associations. The expected benefit is a more efficient use of resources and a sustained and effective national infrastructure.