1998 Year of the Ocean Mitigating the Impacts of Coastal Hazards 



made in the construction and retrofit of more disaster resistant structures, one of the main barriers 

 to progress continues to be a lack of incentives to encourage such measures. 



Land Use Planning and Policies. Land use planning has long been recognized as an effective 

 method for mitigating the impacts of natural hazards. As more information becomes available to 

 local communities about the nature of the hazards they face, it is possible to integrate more 

 detailed hazards data into ongoing planning and decision-making processes. Technology 

 improvements such as the use of Geographic Information Systems in local plarming allow 

 numerous factors, including hazards, to be considered in making land use decisions. Even though 

 more information is available, there remains numerous obstacles in implementing policies to 

 prohibit, restrict, or even discourage development and redevelopment in high hazard areas. Many 

 of these obstacles are political, relating to the ongoing debates about the rights of individual 

 property owners versus the rights of government to restrict the use of private property. Even 

 more basic, however, is the difficulty often faced in raising the priority of hazard considerations 

 in the routine planning process. 



REFERENCES 



Burton, Ian, Kates, Robert W., White, Gilbert F. 1993. The Environment as Hazard. New York : 

 Guilford Press. 



CuUiton, T.J., CM. Blackwell, D.G. Remer, T.R. Goodspeed, M.A. Warren, and J. J. 

 McDonough III. 1990. "50 Years of Population Change along the Nation's Coasts, 1960-2010" 

 Coastal Trends Series, Report No. 2. 



Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 1997. A Reference Library - Fact Sheet,@ 

 FEMA web site. (http://www.fema.gov/fema/factlO.html) September 22, 1997. 



Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 1995. "National Hazard Mitigation Strategy: 

 Partnerships for Building Safer Communities." 



Godschalk et al, 1989. Catastrophic Coastal Storms: Hazard Mitigation and Development 

 Management. Durham: Duke University Press. 



Katuna, Michael P., Robert B. Blythe, Michael E. Moeller, and Bryan P. Williams, 1995. "Final 

 Report: Study of Shoreline Migration Rates and Sediment Budgets for Seabrook, Kiawah, and 

 Folly Islands, South Carolina." Pages 2-3. University of Charleston. Submitted to the Minerals 

 Management Service, Office of International Activities and Mineral Resources, Hemdon, VA 



National Research Council, 1990. Managing Coastal Erosion, National Academy Press, 

 Washington, D.C. 



H-16 



