Managing natural disaster risk through enforcement of development standards

Severe earthquakes in urban areas can cause great damage to the built environment. In urban areas, the built environment consists of infrastructure systems such as highways and bridges, commercial complexes, and residential buildings. As pointed out in the literature, enforcement of building codes is not well carried out. It is estimated that better building code compliance and enforcement could have prevented 25% of the insured losses from Hurricane Andrew, which hit Southern Florida just south of Miami in August, 1992. Therefore, it is important to ensure that infrastructure and residential development projects meet the prescribed standards. Consequently, factors affecting compliance to building codes and standards are investigated. Firstly, inspection and enforcement processes used in major infrastructure and residential development projects are described. Secondly, the “command-and-control” approach to building safety is studied by utilizing a game-theoretic model. The model is expressed as a game in extensive form in which the two decision makers are the developer, who builds a development project and is potentially motivated to violate the building standard, and the inspector, representing the government agency which inspects and enforces the standard in question. Parameters considered in assessing the cost-effectiveness of building code enforcement are the gains for violators, the costs of inspection, penalties, and the social value for stopping violations. Implications for disaster risk management are presented