Evidence Gaps and Inclusive Cyclone Resilience After the 1970 Bhola Cyclone: A Critical Narrative Review

The 1970 Bhola Cyclone is commonly described through mortality, political rupture, and the later expansion of cyclone preparedness in Bangladesh. This bounded critical narrative review separates evidence that directly concerns Bhola from later Bangladesh disaster studies used only for contextual interpretation. The searched English-language peer-reviewed and authoritative institutional sources directly document mortality, political and institutional change, and long-term health, education, and consumption losses after early-life exposure. Screening was conducted by one reviewer; initial hit counts were not archived; and Bangla-language, Urdu-language, and local archival collections were not searched. Accordingly, “not identified” means only that evidence was not found in the sources examined and must not be interpreted as evidence of absence. Within this bounded source set, Bhola-specific empirical studies were not identified for prolonged grief, post-traumatic stress, disability trajectories, functional decline, gendered caregiving, migration histories, or intergenerational memory. The review’s contribution is a structured account of which claims are directly supported, which remain unmeasured, and how later evidence can inform research questions without being projected backward. Protective capacity and inclusive resilience are used as an interpretive heuristic to distinguish system performance from equitable access, functioning, participation, and recovery. Ten proposed monitoring measures and a time-sensitive research agenda are linked to existing Bangladesh data and governance systems.