South East Asia Resilience Hub (SEARCH): Socio-Economic Resilience of Coastal Communities

Funder

Global Challenges Research Fund

Value 

£25,000

PI and Project Team Members 

Gavin Sullivan
Chas Morrison

Project Partners and Countries

Saut Sagala, Resilience Development Initiative, Indonesia
Researchers from Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines

Project Overview

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 and coastal hazards. 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.

This network contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals and ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community elements to build coastal communities’ resiliency. This network links the under-researched and fill the gap of socioeconomic resilience factors in such coastal communities through interdisciplinary approaches.

Project Impact Statement

Our aim is to consolidate existing trans-disciplinary research and knowledge to create sustainable and equitable interventions to reduce vulnerability and social impacts of disaster in coastal communities. This knowledge exchange expands cross-border resilience research while retaining domestic contextualisation and specificities. SEARCH comprises a central repository hub for SEA partners’ collaboration for improved dissemination and sharing outputs, through joint seminars, conferences, joint data collection, expanded networking and disaster policy input, all of which will help strengthen the network’s core partners and collaborators.

Outputs will be disseminated in various mediums through workshops, exhibitions, social media, working papers, journal articles, newspaper editorials, and other forums. The result will be a challenge-led applied research network that feeds into government policy at national and regional level through our existing links with ASEAN, UNISDR and national governments.