The term mitigation is often mistaken for litigation, and they are not entirely divorced. What we really mean by mitigation is reducing impact. The activity of early warning and the activities of preparedness planning as well as many other pre-disaster activities certainly have that effect. However, in the engineering, architecture, and planning sense, what we mean by mitigation is the reduction of impact of natural phenomenon primarily on buildings and facilities used by people. For that reason we will be focusing primarily on building related disasters; that is, disasters which effect people through building or constructed facility failures. Those failures are primarily related to the natural hazards of earthquakes, floods, and winds, a somewhat different selection from those which you deal with in terms of emergency medical services.