Pre-Disaster Restoration Measure of Preparedness for Post-Disaster Restoration in Tokyo

Since the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in Kobe, various efforts have been made in Japan in earthquake recovery & restoration to deal with the following issues:

• How to restore city, community and houses
• How to make restoration plan and to consent it through citizen’s participation
• How to be spent for city governments and citizens to decide on optimum restoration, building consensus, and 
• How to implement urban restoration and recovery of citizen’s livelihoods in the shortest time possible

The main issues of Regional Disaster Management Plan have been the preparedness of disaster response activities involving disaster drills in extinguishing fires and implementing rescue, evacuation, and temporary housing. Not only Town planning for disaster mitigation, but also Restoration measures have seldom been included in such plans, but some municipalities think that it is important to prepare restoration measures and that procedures for community-based restoration are also needed. The revised Basic Disaster Management Plan (1998) emphasized the need to improve restoration measures, which and some progressive municipalities have begun to implement as pre-disaster restoration.

We begin by reviewing pre-disaster restoration concepts, then focus on Tokyo as an example of municipalities introducing pre-disaster restoration. Under Journal of Disaster Research Vol.3 No.6, 2008 conclusions, we include remarks on projected pre-disaster restoration efforts.