Successful Earthquake predictions
The Haicheng Earthquake is the only successful evacuation of a devastating earthquakes. It's notable that the Chinese scientists thought they had figured out ot predict earthquakes, but have subsequently failed to predict many catastrophic earthquakes and many people's lives have been ended, ruined, changed. 

It is news to me that this research is in decline, but there has been recent scrutiny for failing to predict earthquakes. This type of research is very hard, and probably not answerable, here is a related question:Is earthquake prediction possible?

Hazard assessment is much easier because we can model many different types of known earthquakes and infer the damage from that. There aren't as many unknowns, it seems, for what happens after an earthquake as there is during the buildup. Plate Tectonics is complex as we live in on a dynamic planet.