"The national investment in NEHRP through these agencies [NIST, FEMA, NSF, USGS] recognizes at least four important factors related to the costs of preparing for large-scale disasters. (1) First and foremost, ensuring public safety is inherently a government responsibility. (2) Second, absent appropriate incentives, private interests and corporations invest in preparedness and mitigation measures that they believe protects their economic wellbeing, not necessarily those that yield greatest societal well-being. (3) Third, earthquake impacts and consequences can be felt at regional and national scales; they are not just restricted to a local area of most severe shaking. As a result, post10/ earthquake performance is based on all infrastructure elements acting as a system, not simply as an aggregation of individual components. In today's economy, damaging earthquakes that strike in some areas of the country will severely impact the national economy and, possibly, national security. Finally, there are few, if any, construction-related businesses that are large enough to possess the investment resources needed to address major national earthquake safety challenges". (NEHRP, Strategic Plan for the NEHRP Fiscal Years 2008-2012, April 2008 Draft, p. 4)