ORCID

Abstract

Low-income communities in disaster-prone regions face persistent challenges in translating post-disaster recovery investments into sustained resilience, as they navigate trade-offs among engineering objectives, policy constraints, and evolving socio-economic needs. Despite the widespread adoption of Build Back Better (BBB) principles, evidence on the long-term sustainability of outcomes remains limited, particularly in low- and lower-middle-income contexts. This study examines the sustainability of BBB outcomes in two Indonesian case studies: Banda Aceh (approximately 18 years after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami) and Central Sulawesi (approximately 4 years after the 2018 earthquake, liquefaction, and tsunami). Drawing on structured housing assessments, household surveys, semi-structured interviews, and stakeholder consultations, the study evaluates how risk-informed design, zoning controls, and recovery governance mechanisms persist or erode over time. Across both cases, five recurring divergence pathways are identified: spatial non-compliance and location persistence, incremental housing adaptation, functional erosion of risk-informed design features, reversion to non-engineered construction practices, and institutional memory decay. These pathways reflect interacting institutional, socio-economic, and technical barriers whose influence evolves across recovery phases. Central Sulawesi illustrates medium-term feasibility challenges linked to relocation delays and livelihood dependency, while Banda Aceh reveals longer-term institutional drift, coastal re-encroachment, and erosion of risk-informed practices. To address these dynamics, the study develops and applies a temporal multi-barrier lever framework that conceptualizes BBB as a path-dependent process shaped by evolving cross-domain interactions. The framework is operationalized through a logic matrix linking divergence pathways to coordinated, time-sequenced levers across recovery phases. The findings show that sustaining BBB requires continuous alignment among governance, livelihoods, adaptable design, and institutional capacity. The study contributes longitudinal evidence and a practical framework for governments and NGOs to sustain resilience gains beyond reconstruction.

Publication Date

2026-01-01

Publication Title

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction

Volume

141

ISSN

2212-4209

Acceptance Date

2026-05-06

Deposit Date

2026-08-11

Funding

This work was supported by the UK EPSRC Learning from Earthquakes project [grant number EP/P025951/1].

Keywords

Build Back Better, Disaster resilience, Multi-barrier framework, Post-disaster housing, Sustainable long-term recovery

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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