Build Back Better Recovery Evaluation

Build Back Better (BBB) recovery evaluation is a principle-based framework for assessing whether post-disaster reconstruction reduces future risk rather than merely restoring pre-disaster conditions. Formalized by Sandeeka Mannakkara, Suzanne Wilkinson, and Regan Potangaroa and demonstrated in the 2009 Victorian bushfire reconstruction, the framework organizes recovery around three categories: disaster risk reduction (safer structures and siting), community recovery (social and economic restoration), and effective implementation (stakeholder engagement, regulation, and monitoring). Under each category sit concrete principles against which a recovery effort is evaluated, comparing what was achieved with what resilient recovery requires and with the pre-disaster baseline. Endorsed within the Sendai Framework and embedded in post-disaster needs assessment, BBB evaluation turns the slogan 'build back better' into an auditable standard for resilient reconstruction.