5. Recommendations
This paper examined natural hazard mitigation planning practices in the United States and in
particular in Southern California. From the previous chapters can be concluded that natural
hazard mitigation is often not applied in the most effective way. It is possible to formulate
recommendations for all levels of government that might improve the effectiveness of natural
hazard mitigation, and to provide some suggestions for further research that might increase the
understanding of local natural hazard mitigation practices.
Federal natural hazard mitigation should shift its focus from enabling development in
hazardous areas through structural mitigation and disaster relief to more sustainable non-
structural mitigation. Since most mitigation takes place at the local level, federal mitigation
policies should focus more on encouraging local governments to undertake non-structural
mitigation efforts, provide local governments with sufficient information on hazards and
possible mitigation measures, provide sufficient funding for mitigation, and increase personal
or local responsibility for the consequences of a decision to live or build in a high-risk area.
The State of California should make higher demands on local governments concerning the
observance of state planning mandates, in order to force local governments to do their utmost.
A high quality mitigation plan is a requirement for high quality mitigation. Therefore, if
mitigation is considered an important issue, state government should support local
governments more instead of leaving them free to decide for themselves, since local
governments have to contend with so many immediate problems that mitigation and mitigation
planning are easily economized on.
From the evaluation of local mitigation plans emerged the impression that local governments
are avoiding the difficult aspects of plan-making. Many safety elements lack a combination of
well-formulated goals, specific policies derived from the goals, implementation schedules that
lead to an effective implementation of policies and thereby verwezenlijken realize goals, a
clear prioritization of interests, and a recognition of the interconnectedness of the various plan
elements and goals. Local governments should not avoid these difficulties, but meet and solve
them instead. This would greatly increase the quality of the local plans and would probably
lead to a more efficient and effective implementation of mitigation measures.
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