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.
The SEARCH Network links scholars and practitioners from South East Asia (SEA) and the UK
around the topic of disaster risk management (DRM), community response, and socio-economic
factors of coastal communities in the SEA region. These countries share many similarities
and interests regarding coastal hazard issues. 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.
This network contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals and ASEAN Socio-Cultural
Community elements with its endeavor to build coastal communities’ resiliency. This network
links the under-researched and fill the gap of social- economic resilience factors in such
coastal communities through interdisciplinary approaches. Each stakeholders, such as
National and Local Government, NGOs, and coastal communities from each partnering countries
can exchange and integrate their perspectives about building coastal communities’
resiliency. Knowledge exchange, best-practice of adaptive community, coastal planning and
development, potential future research, and robust practice-policy interventions will be
produced through this hub.
Sources of Funding: The Academy of Medical Science - GCRF Networking Grants
HI 25.02°C | LO 25.02°C
