Researcher aims to bolster disaster recovery efforts

As China enters its annual flood season, images of submerged villages on Pakistani student Asma Bibi's phone bring back memories of the devastating floods that struck her home country 13 years ago.

Among the scenes of displacement and loss, one question from a young survivor has remained with her: "Can you bring my mother back?"

The plea shaped Bibi's lifelong commitment to helping communities recover from disaster events. For over a decade, she has worked at the grassroots level in Pakistan, focusing on the psychological impact of floods — an aspect she believes is often overlooked in post-disaster recovery.

She has traveled across 12 cities and 300 remote villages, providing 1,278 community psychological counseling sessions to flood survivors. She has walked along damaged rural roads to reach isolated communities and continued her work even with limited funding.

"I am not here to save everyone. I am here to save someone," Bibi said.

Through years of fieldwork, Bibi found that the damage caused by floods extends far beyond wrecked houses and infrastructure. She has met mothers grieving their children and visited villages whose residents struggled to recover from prolonged trauma.

"Houses can be rebuilt within months, but the human heart takes years to mend," she said.

Her experience also led her to explore how ecological restoration, including the planting of native trees and recovery of local landscapes, could support psychological healing. To turn that observation into a scientific approach, she enrolled at Tianjin University in September 2024 to conduct her doctoral research.

At Tianjin University, Bibi is studying the links between ecological restoration, disaster resilience and community recovery. The university's research strengths in climate studies, flood management and urban design provide an interdisciplinary foundation for her work.

Under the guidance of Professor Zhang Qinying, Bibi is working to transform years of frontline experience into an academic framework.

"When we first met, professor Zhang listened patiently to my 13 years of field experiences and told me: 'You have done the work of the heart. Now let us give it science'," Bibi recalled.

Beyond research, she has also found support in her daily life in China. Zhang and her classmates celebrated her birthday in February with flowers and a handwritten card. During this year's Spring Festival, Zhang's family taught her to make dumplings and encouraged her when her homemade dumplings looked imperfect.

"The shape does not matter. What matters is the heart," Zhang told her.

When Bibi became seriously ill, her Chinese classmates accompanied her to the hospital and cared for her like family.

"Pakistan gave me my roots; China gave me new branches," she said.

Her journey also reflects broader cooperation between China and Pakistan in areas such as disaster management, climate resilience and knowledge exchange. While infrastructure projects connect communities physically, Bibi hopes her research will contribute to improving disaster recovery from a human perspective.

After graduation, she plans to return to Pakistan and develop a model combining ecological restoration, psychological support and climate resilience for flood-prone communities. She also hopes to promote academic exchanges between Chinese and Pakistani institutions to share experience in disaster recovery.

Liu Jiayi contributed to this story.

yandongjie@chinadaily.com.cn