How can the international Earth science and earthquake engineering communities help?
I will propose four modest activities and one ambitious one. (Some organizations, such as SSA and EERI, have recently embarked on activities similar to the modest ones proposed here.) First, these communities could urge the World Bank, the United Nations, and national development organizations to increase, relatively, the amount of investment in disaster mitigation compared to that in disaster response. Increasing this proportion has been suggested by many people, and large international development banks even recognize the logic of doing this, but for the last decade the balance has been heavily in favor of response. To help people when they are in greatest need, by providing search and rescue, recovery, and reconstruction, attracts the attention of the news media and is therefore politically attractive. But these efforts should not displace resources that could be used to prevent death and losses. The international earthquake professional societies could use their credibility to argu
