What the IDNDR Has Meant to the Earthquake Community

Abstract

The International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) has had a profound relationship with the earthquake community. It was, in a sense, the brainchild of the earthquake community since the concept for the IDNDR was announced by Dr. Frank Press, then president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), at the 1984 World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in San Francisco. The earthquake community followed the call dutifully and provided full support, assisting NAS and the United Nations in establishing the 1990s as the IDNDR. This paper offers a firsthand look of the making of the Decade. It provides readers with a glimpse of the key events that had been shaping the practice of earthquake engineering before the arrival of the Decade. It offers the writers' observations and assessments on the changes in the emphasis in the earthquake community's practices—the shift from research and implementation, the periodical updating of our model building codes with the National Earthquake Hazards Red...