Resilience in the quiet months: an anticipatory reconstruction capacity framework and its diagnostic application to cyclone Ditwah, Sri Lanka

Purpose This paper aims to specify and apply a framework linking capacities built before a hazard to the outcomes that follow it, running from the immediate impact and response to the quality of eventual reconstruction. Using Cyclone Ditwah in Sri Lanka, set against two South Asian cases, it argues that durable resilience accumulates in the quiet months between disasters. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual paper synthesises pre-disaster recovery planning, disaster risk reduction mainstreaming and build back better into one construct, anticipatory reconstruction capacity, expressed as testable propositions. It is applied to cyclone Ditwah using secondary data and probed through a structured comparison with Odisha and coastal Bangladesh. Findings The framework links three measurable capacities, namely, risk literacy, institutional integration and anticipatory investment, to a chain that runs from disaster impact through response to reconstruction. The present evidence bears on the first link: for Ditwah, impacts tracked weaknesses in these capacities rather than the hazard’s rarity and in the comparison, mortality from similar storms fell sharply where capacity had been built deliberately, though life-safety gains outpaced asset protection. Evidence on reconstruction quality itself awaits the maturing of recovery and is framed as a proposition for future testing. Research limitations/implications The comparison is small and the cases unmatched, building plausibility rather than proving causation; the propositions invite larger comparative testing. Practical implications It helps planners and finance ministries treat reconstruction finance as investment in reduced future risk, and defend preparedness whose returns are large but politically discounted. Social implications Disaster losses fall hardest on poorer, more exposed households, so embedding risk in routine decisions is a question of equity, not only engineering. Originality/value The paper does not claim to discover that resilience is built before disasters. Its contribution is to integrate these adjacent traditions into one operationalised construct, positioned explicitly against each, stated as falsifiable propositions and probed against documented variation.