just a start...

1. Design buildings with more safety features like structural cores and the ability to sway/move without breaking and collapsing during earthquakes especially priority 1 buildings like hospitals and refuge centres.
2. Reinforce the buildings with steel and properly cured concrete.
3. Equip structures with caches of supplies/equipment to assist after a disaster.

Not surprisingly, it was the foreign embassies with their higher construction standards that have stood up the best from the quake.

Hopefully when they rebuild (practically everything!) with the assistance of foreign aid that they will build more intelligently like they are doing in New Orleans.