Natural disasters can have a devastating impact on the social and emotional well-being of children and adolescents (Garrett et al., 2007; Kataoka, Rowan, & Hoagwood, 2009; Walsh, 2007). Exposure to disasters puts young people at risk for a number of stressors such as displacement from their homes, loss of friends, family, home and community (Abigail Gewirtz, Forgatch, & Wieling, 2008; La Greca & Silverman, 2010). They are also at a higher risk for future mental health issues related to the event including anxiety and depressive disorders (Jaycox; et al., 2010; Sapienza & Masten, 2011). While there are many interventions that address mental health symptoms, there is a gap in widely accessible prevention programming for mitigation of future mental health issues for young people affected by a disaster (Silverman et al., 2008). To address the gap in services this dissertation sought to examine the efficacy of an intervention, the Journey of Hope (JoH), an eight-session school based model designed to be delivered to the aggregate of children and adolescents affected by disasters. This three article dissertation presents the JoH through: (1) a conceptual description of the intervention; (2) a quasi-experimental waitlist control study and; (3) a qualitative case study. Findings from the quantitative and qualitative studies indicate that after participation in the JoH, participants had an increase in protective factors such as positive coping skills, pro-social behaviors, and affect regulation. The qualitative case study also indicated that children learned about disaster related issues such as grief, anger, and peer victimization. Future research should examine the longitudinal impact of the intervention through larger samples, different geographical and cultural contexts, and with sensitive measurement instruments. / text

Context: Backup and Disaster Recovery, DR play a vital role in day-to-day IT operations. They define extensive aspects of business continuity plan in an enterprise. There is a continuous need to improve backup and recovery performance concerning attributes such as backup window size, high availability, security, etc. Definitive information is what enterprises strive for and rely upon to deviate from traditional methods towards advancing technologies, which are an intrinsic segment of business mundane actions. Objectives: In this study, we investigate Backup and DR plans on an enterprise level. They are compared in terms of performance metrics such as Recovery Time Objective, Recovery Point Objective, Time taken to backup, Time taken to recover and Total cost of ownership. Also, how CPU and memory utilization conduct differ in both tape-based, cloud-based Backup and DR. Methods: Literature study was the first step to formulate research questions by understanding present technologies in Backup and DR. This led us to conduct a survey for further understanding of challenges faced in industries gaining a more practical exposure. A case study was conducted in an enterprise to capture accurate values. An experiment had been deployed to compare performance of both scenarios and analyze which methodology elevates Backup and DR performance by overcoming challenges. Results: The results attained through this thesis encompass performance related metrics and also the load in terms of CPU and memory utilizations. Survey results were observed to gain better understanding of current technologies and challenges with Backup and DR in enterprises. The cloudbased backup has proved to be better in considered enterprise environment during experimentation in terms of RPO, RTO, CPU, memory utilizations and Total Cost of ownership. Conclusions: There have been numerous research works conducted on how backup and DR plans can be made better. But, they lack accurate information on how their performances vary, what all parameters can be improved by shifting towards advanced and contemporary methodologies withaddressing features such as scalability, flexibility and adaptability, which is provided in this study.

This thesis set out to explore the experiences of clients and counsellors in immediate crisis intervention shortly after a major earthquake. It explored the experiences and perceptions of change during counselling for both clients and counsellor, all of which were exposed to the disaster. This study supported the idea of counsellors needing to adapt to the context of post-disaster counselling and addressing client’s immediate needs. Having both been through the same disaster meant counsellors were often going through similar experiences and emotions as their clients during this time. This led counsellors to develop a greater sense of connection and understanding of their client, as well as showing more emotional responsivity and self-disclosure. This was experienced as different to their normal therapy engagement. The implications of these counsellor responses were seen to be helpful, but at times had the potential to be hindering for counselling. Clients valued their counsellor’s techniques and personal qualities but often failed to identify what contribution they, themselves, made to change processes. The differing nature of counselling in post-disaster areas, as gauged by this study may help inform expectations and experiences regarding provision of post-disaster acute interventions.

This thesis argues that the return of remains deserves greater attention in humanitarian action. When remains are returned in an undignified manner, or not at all, this can harm the deceased person’s family and provoke the surrounding community. The inability to return remains has a significant impact on the deceased’s family. A conceptual framework – using concepts of posthumous dignity, boundary objects and moral injury – is outlined in this thesis. An extensive literature review was conducted to landmark events and publications regarding human remains and the impact of returning remains to families. After examining a variety of sectors and professions for return-of-remains practices, it has been observed that the way in which remains are returned to families, including what they are interred within and surrounded by, is critical to preventing moral injury and other distress to the families. The thesis also contends that efforts to return remains to families are widely and well received by affected communities; however these efforts require a well-coordinated approach of standardised procedures. Examples of prevailing practices from several professions are used to propose a humanitarian approach for the return of remains to families, with a goal of safeguarding the dignity of the dead and helping families cope with their loss. An analysis of such case material makes possible the formulation of recommendations on how to improve practices in the humanitarian sector. Protecting the dead is a responsibility of the living, and guidance is needed on how to return remains in an appropriate and sensitive manner.

No description available.

In this thesis I study the nature of decision making under uncertainty in the case of natural catastrophes and reinsurance underwriting at Lloyd's of London. I begin by describing the broad context of natural catastrophes and society, which forms the basis for a market in catastrophe reinsurance. I then proceed to a review of literatures in risk, uncertainty, philosophy, and probability as a prelude to an analysis of decision making under catastrophic risk. According to the early 20th century philosopher-economist Frank Knight, risk specified those cases in which a frequency probability could be assigned, while situations of uncertainty do not allow a frequency probability since they are unique instances. In the thesis, I make the additional argument that risk and uncertainty are not solely categories of probability, but rather categories of probability and causality. The second main strand of the thesis refers to J.M. Keynes' work on probability which while related to frequency probability, is different in its emphasis on judgment and the assessment of information. I propose a causal framework to Keynes' weight of argument approach in terms of J.L. Mackie's causal field. With these two main ideas on probability and the addition of the causal field, the thesis presents the theoretical basis of its model of decision making. The last component of the model is developed through a review and critique of the economic literature on decision making under uncertainty. As the literature is founded upon frequency probability definitions of risk, the thesis argues through its theoretical investigations that this approach neglects the causal element of decision making, and that uncertainty requires a broader conceptualization than simply lack of probability. This final component, decision making routines, combines both individual and organizational elements. The empirical investigation of catastrophe risk underwriting at Lloyd's is organized into categories of decision making within a situated market context. I investigate the dominant categories and find that capital capacity and relationships drive reinsurance praxis. As an integration of its theoretical and empirical components, the thesis applies its risk decision making model. This model has implications for economic geography studies of the firm, in that it provides an epistemic and organizational basis for the formalization of tacit knowledge. The model also holds consequences for economic decision making theory, in that it integrates causal assessment in the purely probability based economic paradigm.

Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2008. / Thesis Advisor(s): Salmeron, Javier. "March 2008." Description based on title screen as viewed on May 16, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-60). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-59).

Thesis (M.Com.)(Informatics)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes summary. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

Master of Science / Department of Computer Science / Doina Caragea / In the last few decades, we have witnessed many natural disasters that have shaken the nations across the world. Millions of people have lost their lives, cities have been destroyed, people have gone homeless, injured and their lives have been affected. Sometimes hours or even days after a disaster, people are still stuck in the disaster sites, powerless, homeless and without food, as the rescue teams do not always get information about people in need in a timely manner. Whenever there is a natural disaster like a hurricane or an earthquake, people start tweeting about it. Most of the tweets are posted by users who are in the disaster sites, and may contain information about victims of the disaster: where they are and what the problem is, in what areas the rescue teams should work or focus on, or if someone needs special help. Such information can be very useful for the response teams, which can leverage this information in the recovery or rescue process. However, rescue team are faced with an information overload problem, due to the large number of tweets they need to sift through. To help with this issue, computational approaches can be used to analyze and prioritize information that may be useful to the rescue teams. In this project, we have crawled tweets related to natural disasters, and extracted useful information in CSV files. Then, we have designed and developed a database to store the tweets. The design of the database is such that it will help us to query and gain information about a natural disaster. We have also performed some statistical analysis, such as deriving word clouds of the tweets posted during natural disasters. The analysis shows the areas where the users who post tweet about disaster are highly concerned. The word cloud analysis can help in comparing multiple natural disasters to understand patterns that are common or specific to disasters in terms of how Twitter users talk about them.