Introduction: ‘After the disaster is before the disaster’

This chapter aims at the comparison and analysis of disaster management after mega-disasters through land-use planning described in Part A. This aim differs in treating the cases ‘after’ the disasters from the previous chapter, which deals with the cases of the ‘pre’-disaster phase. In the process of reconstructing in the aftermath of serious disasters, the biggest challenge is how to prevent similar disasters that may occur in the future.

Needless to say, disaster risk management efforts should be undertaken before the disaster to minimise the damage. In most cases, however, these efforts face a harsh reality. In ordinary situations, the existence of built-up areas is taken for granted and people's interests also lie in a variety of topics other than disaster prevention; it is thus not often recognised that the biggest challenge is raising such disaster prevention capabilities. However, since urban areas face outflows or devastating blows in the wake of serious disasters, the enhancement of these disaster prevention capabilities becomes a primary concern, and the possibility of their realisation is higher where the degree of damage is greater, which is to say where urban areas are becoming vacant.

As tools for disaster risk management, we may cite so-called ‘soft’ measures, which include practices such as the securing of evacuation routes, the regular implementation of evacuation drills and the provision of early warning information. However, in addition to these, it is also important to manage risks through the control of how space is used by utilising the fact that hazards and their intensity differ according to their spatial location, as does the extent of exposure to such hazards, or vulnerability, according to the way in which land is used.

On the other hand, a disaster prevention perspective cannot encompass everything that must be considered when formulating spatial plans. Even ensuring that disaster prevention is taken into account, where this has a major impact on other elements, such as lifestyle or means of subsistence, for example, it will eventually lead to a decline in the local community. In order to accomplish reconstruction in the normal sense of the word, what is required is sustainable local development that will return local lifestyles and industry to the state that they were at prior to the disaster, and, moreover, to use the disaster as an opportunity to overcome earlier constraints.