This volume examines lessons learned in reducing the impact of disasters on communities in China, Japan and other countries world-wide. Asia is the most disaster-prone continent. The 2012 data on natural disasters in 28 Asian countries, released by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Belgian-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters on December 11th, 2012 showed that, from 1950 to 2011, nine out of ten people affected by disasters globally were in Asia; that of the top five disasters that created the most damage in 2012, three were in China; that...