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Even with good maps, there's no guarantee that the public will get the word about landslide hazards, or that state and local governments will take action to discourage or prevent building in dangerous areas.

The bottom line is that weather events not only threaten private property and family budgets, but they also can decimate public resources and government coffers.

As an economist specializing in the global economy, international trade and debt, I have spent most of my career helping others make big decisions - prime ministers, presidents and chief executives - and so I'm all too aware of the risks and dangers of poor choices in the public as well as the private sphere.

The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine.

The value of catastrophic events is that they can help people face up to problems that are otherwise impossible to address.

Scientists are being portrayed by much of the power structure in politics and business as having a vested interest - that they're just out to get more grant money by exaggerating the threats.

The entire federal budget for landslide research is $3.5 million a year - far less than the property value lost on a single day when 17 mansions slid down a hill in 2005 in Laguna Beach, Calif.

If information ends up in the wrong hands, the lives of people very often are immediately at risk.

Where there is a problem, the risks to the public are greater than they've ever been before.

Nothing could be more dangerous than following the popular maxim whereby it is the spirit of the law that must be consulted. This is an embankment that, once broken, gives way to a torrent of opinions.