Researcher:

1. Dr. Saut Sagala (Resilience Development Initiative)
2. Prof. Gavin Sullivan (Coventry University)
3. Dewi Anggraini (Asian Disaster Preparedness Center)
4. Dr. Muhi Usamah (UNDP)
5. Dr. Ebinezer Florano (University of the Philippines)

Participants:

1. Resilience Development Initiative (Indonesia),
2. Coventry University,
3. Asian Disaster Preparedness Center,
4. United Nations Development Programme,
5. University of the Philippines

Location: Indonesia, Malaysia

Recently, the 2018 earthquake and tsunami in Central Sulawesi (Palu) devastated communities. Long-term sustainability and livelihoods are affected due to the destruction, loss of life, loss of shelters and economic sources, particularly as the government’s new spatial mapping has designated almost the whole coastline as hazard/risk areas; in turn, local community confidence in government interventions and disaster science has diminished. The Palu disaster is a recent, relevant, and novel case to be contrasted with other resilience issues in relevant locations throughout Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines. This disaster occurred in a seismically active country and further illustrates how disaster preparedness and response capabilities of coastal communities are still deprioritized. Responding to this predicament a team of ASEAN-based multidisciplinary team of researcher lead by Dr. Saut Sagala (RDI Senior Research Fellow) conduct a network research titled SEARCH (South East Asia Resilience Hub) Network.

This network builds upon current joint research projects between RDI and Coventry university to facilitate knowledge exchange on community adaptive capacities and recovery from disaster, socio-economic factors in disaster preparedness, response and reconstruction, and unintended consequences of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) efforts; particularly those that are government-led. SEARCH combines social science and natural hazard research into an interdisciplinary community of practice for at-risk coastal communities, and facilitates collaboration between SEA and UK-based researchers on impact of the Palu, Central Sulawesi disaster that exhibit potential for creative lesson sharing with other coastal communities in the SEA region, including Padang and West Java coastal areas. These lessons wil be centered around aspects pertinent to disaster resilience in coastal areas which includes adaptive community responses, suitable early warning mechanisms, education, and training. The SEARCH Network incorporates researchers and NGOs in SEA to enhance knowledge exchange and conceptualise future research plans on cutting-edge issues related to local level disaster recovery, how unintended and negative impacts of DRR initiatives can have adverse effect on communities resilience and levels of trust, government-citizen engagement, and survivor led initiatives.