ABSTRACT

The great earthquake that occurred in the Indian Ocean in Aceh � Indonesia on December 26, 2004, and recently occur in the Pacific Ocean in East Coast of Japan on March 11, 2011 caused an unprecedented large tsunami, which successively struck more than ten coastal countries and resulted in more about 400,000 deaths and severe economics losses. The whole world was shocked by the tsunami and governments as well as scientific community all over the world were forced to reflect on the issue: how could mankind effectively utilize science and technology to cope with similar serious natural disasters? Many international efforts have been made to explore the serious problem. One of the international groups who took prompt action as soon as the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami occur was the Inter Academy Panel (IAP) on International Issues. This paper cited the study of the IAP, their recommendations on natural disasters mitigation especially in developing countries. IAP give suggestions to mitigation of earthquake, typhoon or hurricane, and flood as well as drought disaster. In addition, some natural disaster mitigation strategies which was prepared by Carla were also cited. This paper bring to the conclusion that the assistances and aids on the disaster mitigation in developing countries should be operated from a multidisciplinary perspective including sociology, economics, agriculture, environment studies, science, engineering, and education.

Keywords: natural disasters, tsunami, mitigation, economic losses.