SENDAI, Japan \u2014 Politicians and aid officials will gather in Japan\u2019s quake- and tsunami-hit northeast Tuesday to discuss what lessons can be learned from disasters.
\nPre-emptive measures to reduce damage \u2014 and save lives \u2014 when nature strikes will be top of the agenda at this two-day conference, part of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
\nOrganisers picked Sendai as the capital of a region that lost nearly 19,000 people when the massive waves of March 2011 rolled ashore, crushing whole communities.
\nKazushige Taniguchi, the World Bank\u2019s special representative to Japan said delegates would \u201cshare and learn from Japan\u2019s experience in last year\u2019s quake and tsunami disaster\u201d.
\n\u201cLots of developing countries are today rapidly putting up infrastructure without paying enough attention to disaster prevention.
\n\u201cWe aim to make it standard to incorporate disaster prevention into the planning of development aid,\u201d he told reporters ahead of the meeting.
\nOn Wednesday, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde and World Bank president Jim Yong Kim will visit disaster-hit areas before wrapping up the two-day conference.
\nThe Sendai talks are expected to feed into the communique to be issued on Saturday at the meeting of the Development Committee, the highest Fund and Bank joint decision-making body, Taniguchi said.
\nLast week, Japan and the World Bank released a joint study aimed at sharing experience from last year, when a 9.0-magnitude quake and resulting tsunami crushed the coast and triggered the worst nuclear crisis in a generation.
\nThe study, comprising 32 \u201cknowledge notes\u201d on disaster risk management and post-disaster reconstruction, will be used as a basis of discussions in Sendai.
\n\u201cWe hope aid practitioners will find the knowledge notes useful, as they include some novel findings such as importance of education that would percolate into people\u2019s behaviour,\u201d said Taniguchi.
\nThey also talk about the importance of paying attention to supply chains, a key lesson from Japan\u2019s disaster where global industries like automotive were crippled when a key parts production line was knocked out.
\nEducation, the distribution of hazard maps and the issuance of early warnings as well as the importance of reinforcing key buildings also feature.
\nThe report notes the usefulness of social media for search, rescue and fundraising, and the importance of constructing temporary housing and maintaining existing sources of income in the recovery phase.
\nMany of these notes are still challenges for Japan, where 329,000 people are still living in temporary homes, nearly 19 months on.
\nThe government plans to build new houses in upland areas and to offer cash handouts to partially finance housing loans.
\nThe disaster left 18,684 people dead or missing and sparked reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plant on the coast, figures from the National Police Agency showed.
\nOf those, 2,814 people remain unaccounted for.
\nThe knowledge notes can be downloaded from the world bank <\/p>\n