Building Better amidst the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic: An Analysis of Critical Success Factors within Resilience to Natural Hazards and COVID-19

A disaster can be viewed, from the project perspective, as a unique public problem to be addressed by stakeholders, including the government, through appropriate response, recovery, reduction, and readiness measures. In view of successful disaster management practices, this research explores relevant literature on countries’ post-disaster reconstruction and recovery along with countries’ resilience in curbing the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The research aims to enhance understanding on the successes of past and ongoing events with a disaster resilience lens. It examines the reported critical success factors (CSFs) within resilience to natural hazards and COVID-19, and analyzes them using the Build Back Better (BBB) Framework, a framework intended to evaluate recovery efforts. The analysis results reveal that the CSFs could be linked to the framework’s three categories: disaster risk reduction, community recovery, and effective implementation. However, the emerging environment sees political influences and public policy driving community resilience, which are currently not highlighted in the framework. The research findings are not meant to be exhaustive, since mostly Asia-Pacific case studies were integrated into the literature, and the solution to COVID-19 has yet to be significantly realized. Further systematic review considering the recent developments may corroborate the findings on success and direct future research