If the vulnerability assessment uncovers a highly vulnerable component and the decision is made not to intervene for cost reasons, the company should at least have the necessary material to replace the component as quickly as possible in the event of failure.  Water companies’ purchasing departments should prioritize those materials and equipment that will be required in major emergencies and would be hard to procure in the local market. Moreover, spare-part and accessory storage facilities should be decentralized, located strategically, and properly protected so they can continue to operate in an emergency. (Slide 74).

When it is difficult to inspect system components, it takes longer to identify which have been damaged, increasing the amount of time required for rehabilitation (Slide 75).  In the design and construction of sanitation works, attention must be paid to how difficult it might be to reach certain areas and components (Slide 76).

In an emergency, efforts to restore the service as quickly as possible often lead to rehabilitation works that are carried out without regard for disaster mitigation, often preserving or even increasing the degree of vulnerability prevalent before the emergency.  Rehabilitation measures that are applied without regard to prevention solve the problem in the short term, but in the long run can be much more costly (Slide 77). 

Thanks to advances in disaster mitigation and technology, it is increasingly more feasible to assess the expected behavior of the physical components of sanitation systems.  However, it would be unrealistic to expect even the most thorough prevention measures to keep all system components intact in the event of a major disaster.  The goal of disaster mitigation is to reduce such damage as much as possible.  However, the company should not refrain from planning alternative methods of distributing water to the population should a disaster strike (Slide 78).