Mitigation, Benefits and Costs of

Benefits of Mitigation

Appropriate developmental and technological advances and introducing capabilities that protect against loss from hazards though mitigative practices can help develop a disaster-resilient community. Such measures involve ongoing action to reduce the exposure to, probability of, or potential loss from hazards. They can include implementing and adopting stronger building codes, as seen in the lower six counties of Mississippi on the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and Florida following Hurricane Andrew in 1992. They can equate to public service announcements, or educational messages posted within hardware stores addressing the installation of storm shutters, using tiedowns to protect buildings, or securing a bookshelf in case of an earthquake. Other measures can include the purchase of flood insurance, retrofitting homes in compliance with new building codes, warning systems, land-use planning, and regulations like zoning codes.

The benefits of mitigation can be both obvious and hidden. Benefits are generally defined as the amount of money saved as a result of the mitigative action or the deaths and injury prevented. The benefits of structural mitigation are that the building or facility will not sustain the damage from the next event. This lessens the cost of the next event to include the cost of response, search and rescue, emergency protective measures, and recovery, as well as protects any property or equipment inside the building. These are avoided physical damage, which assists and facilitates the avoided function loss (loss of rental income, wages, or production). This also helps maintain the quality of life and lifestyle of those impacted. Mitigating the structure will also save lives; for example, if a building has a safe room, it will protect people in the event of a tornado and mitigate the loss of life. Other benefits include the avoided causalities, illnesses, and deaths.

Mitigation can be implemented to protect people and property prior to a disaster as a preventative measure. The benefit to this is that ultimately, there may not be a disaster at all, as the vulnerable properties were mitigated. This reduces the cost of debris removal and cleanup, evacuation/rescue costs, and other emergency protective measures and management costs. Lifestyles are less likely to be disrupted, which also helps to reduce stress. Another option is post-disaster mitigation. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides grants based on damage amounts to help fund the implementation of mitigation after a disaster as part of the recovery.

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