Politicians and aid officials will gather in Japan's quake- and tsunami-hit northeast Tuesday to discuss what lessons can be learned from disasters. Pre-emptive measures to reduce damage -- and save lives -- when nature strikes will be top of the agenda at this two-day conference, part of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Organisers picked Sendai as the capital of a region that lost nearly 19,000 people when the massive waves of March 2011 rolled ashore, crushing whole communities.

Kazushige Taniguchi, the World Bank's special representative to Japan said delegates would "share and learn from Japan's experience in last year's quake and tsunami disaster".

"Lots of developing countries are today rapidly putting up infrastructure without paying enough attention to disaster prevention.

"We aim to make it standard to incorporate disaster prevention into the planning of development aid," he told reporters ahead of the meeting.

On Wednesday, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde and World Bank president Jim Yong Kim will visit disaster-hit areas before wrapping up the two-day conference.

The Sendai talks are expected to feed into the communique to be issued on Saturday at the meeting of the Development Committee, the highest Fund and Bank joint decision-making body, Taniguchi said.