What factors affect multidimensional wellbeing in disaster response and recovery in Asia, and how can bilateral aid and development cooperation funding be better targeted to enhance resilience in conflict affected and disaster affected contexts? Enhancing disaster recovery, risk reduction, and resilience are key national priorities for countries prone to natural hazards. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction provides a useful roadmap for guiding development cooperation and investments; however, earlier assessments have prioritized the economic and physical aspects of household and community resilience, ignoring intangible dimensions. These harder to quantify aspects are important to effectively implement the Sendai Framework. This transdisciplinary research incorporates human-nature relations to enhance social and environmental resilience to natural disasters.
Using a mixed-methods approach that weaves together geospatial, earth observation, and regional scale household survey data using spatial-statistical and machine learning methods, this project will develop novel multidimensional wellbeing measures and identify outcomes in pre- and post-disaster affected areas across Asia. We will downscale this data approach for a subset of high-resolution case studies to identify governance and participatory pathways and mechanisms that enable better achievement of the targets and implementation of the Sendai Framework. Therefore, this study aims to:
- Examine which social, environmental, and governance factors determine multidimensional wellbeing outcomes post-disaster at regional and local scales;
- Explore the impact of approaches to stakeholder inclusion and inter-stakeholder collaboration in disaster risk reduction planning and decision-making at local levels; and
- Identify points of entry for increasing the effectiveness of bilateral and multilateral aid and development cooperation at enhancing resilience in well-being outcomes for local communities in conflict-affected and disaster-affected areas in Asia.
Asia-Pacific Resilience Project 