Efforts to build upon and improve the social and economic engines, infrastructure, and institutions within a country can either increase or decrease hazard exposure, hazard vulnerability, and risk.
- Practices that incorporate risk reduction methodologies, such as stringent building codes, resistant materials, proper land use planning, and other important mitigation measures and practices, often reduce the likelihood of disaster events or the consequences that result when events do occur.
- Unwise, uncoordinated, or unsafe development can quickly and dramatically increase the disaster risk faced by the people of a country.
- Mass urbanization and coastal migration which occur with little regard to wise building practices – as is often seen in the megacities of the developing world – is a primary contributor to increased risk of development.
