As others have pointed out, many existing policies encourage the status quo. Incentives in the areas of land-use planning, legal liability, financing, insurance, taxes, loans, building permits, and interest rates, for example, would help encourage people to take hazard mitigation seriously. Conversely, insurance companies should consider increasing premiums for those who fail to mitigate. Ongoing education is needed to change behavior. More effective outreach techniques are needed to reach and involve individual citizens through varied partnerships involving federal, state, and local governments, academia, and the private sector, such as are currently being developed for FEMA's Project Impact.
Acceptable risk needs to be defined.
An outgrowth of public education on disaster mitigation is the ability to consider what risks are acceptable. Federal support is needed. Although California established its Seismic Safety Commission and developed a plan to reduce earthquake risk on its own, help from the federal government is enabling other states to benefit from California's experience. For example, in 1996 FEMA funded a conference for states interested in forming their own seismic safety programs. This opportunity for one state to learn from the experiences of another resulted in many new organizations aimed at reducing earthquake losses in other states.