A Gender-Sensitive Earthquake Recovery Assessment Using Administrative and Satellite Data: The Case of Indonesia’s 2016 Aceh Earthquake

This study assesses the medium-term recovery of women at the village level after the 2016 Aceh earthquake and explains how satellite and administrative data can be used to better identify how to target assistance after a disaster. The study finds that, in the medium term, some aspects of women’s welfare can significantly deteriorate after a disaster even when the affected villages have generally made economic progress. The authors explain how they developed the Women’s Welfare after Disaster Index and how they used nighttime radiance imaging data to gauge the broader economic recovery. They outline an easily replicable way of combining datasets of high and low frequency to assess medium-term recovery more accurately at the village level.