The city is a major industrial center for mechanical and chemical engineering, and salt production. Figure 1 summarizes the demographic features of these three cities. Although all the case-study cities are well equipped with modern infrastructures, they differ in the level of understanding of disaster issues, which is reflected in their future growth plan. A brief description of each city is given below. In Bandung, there is a single coordinating office for emergency response, which becomes active during disasters, receiving reports and transmitting them to other agencies for emergency response.
Disaster management is marginal in the urban growth plan.
Because annual flooding is the most frequent disaster in the city, the focus is on flood disasters and seismic considerations are almost neglected. Bandung, a relatively new city, has no record of damaging earthquakes since its establishment almost 100 years ago. Therefore, the general awareness of citizens and decision makers of seismic risk is very low. In contrast, Tashkent has experienced damaging earthquakes, and seismic risk issues are taken into consideration in urban planning. After the 1966 Tashkent earthquake, a special governmental commission was created comprised of ministries, scientists and engineers.