Building Opportunity centers on disaster response and recovery after a 7.5-magnitude earthquake destroyed the city of Antigua Guatemala, the capital of colonial Guatemala, on July 29, 1773. It also concentrates on the colonial government’s decision to relocate Antigua Guatemala and establish a new capital, New Guatemala. This dissertation examines how the cultural, economic, political, and social views of inhabitants -- bureaucrats, clerics, Indians, architects, and the poor -- shaped their reactions to the tremor. Furthermore, it contends that the migration from Antigua Guatemala to New Guatemala created socioeconomic opportunities through which individuals made strong efforts to rebuild their lives. Debates on natural catastrophe in colonial Latin America have emphasized the ability of calamity to ignite power struggles over competing ideas about emergency management. However, in addition to an analysis of such disputes, this dissertation advances new understandings of the ways in which the earthquake gave victims chances to reshape their world. How did individuals' beliefs influence their attitudes toward the cataclysm? How did the effort to create a new city forge openings for survivors to refashion their identities? This study shows that individual groups' notions of fear, hazard mitigation, history, and socioeconomics defined arguments about whether or not to move. It also demonstrates that the tragedy produced spaces in which officials, ecclesiastics, indigenous peoples, and the impoverished worked to improve their lives. In various ways, administrators and victims turned adversity into an opportunity to become disaster managers and survivors, respectively. / text

Disaster victims and vulnerable populations are audiences that communications professionals and scholars have ignored. Public relation practices dominate current disaster communication policy. This study examines the disaster communication network, including policy and practice, of the Thai Red Cross, before, during, and after the Asian tsunami. Disaster communication(s) is defined as the sharing and exchange of information with the victims immediately affected by a disaster. This definition focuses specifically on the vulnerable audience and allows response efforts to emerge from multiple disciplines. Focusing response efforts on victims' assessed needs and abilities allows for a multi-disciplinary approach to mitigate further suffering. The disciplines of health, development, and communications converge for efficient disaster management. This case study gives great insight into the cultural chasm between policy making and practical application and also reveals the value of personal initiative. A proposed model of disaster communication is offered. Significantly more research is needed in the area of disaster communications.

[pt] As organizações que atuam em resposta a desastres buscam cada vez mais a eficiência na realização dos seus processos para que, assim, possam ser capazes de atender o maior número possível de pessoas afetadas. Neste sentido, o objetivo principal deste trabalho é propor um modelo de maturidade para avaliar operações de desastres e identificar estratégias que permitam a evolução da maturidade. Para este fim, a pesquisa é fundamentada em uma revisão sistemática da literatura, que identificou oito modelos para gestão de operações de desastres, e um estudo de caso. Com base na revisão sistemática da literatura é proposto o Modelo de Maturidade para Processos de Desastres. Como primeira validação, um estudo de caso foi conduzido na Defesa Civil do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil para avaliar a maturidade das operações de resposta em três situações distintas: Geral (Situação 1), um tipo de desastre recorrente na região - as inundações do norte e noroeste fluminense (Situação 2), e um desastre não recorrente - a pandemia de COVID-19 (Situação 3). Constatou-se que para as três situações analisadas a organização apresentou maturidade final igual a 4 (Aurora) com sinais de evolução para o estágio máximo (Apogeu). Além disso, por ser um tipo de desastre recorrente, o desastre da Situação 2 apresentou maiores semelhanças na realização dos processos de resposta a desastres comparados com a Situação Geral (1). / [en] Disaster response organizations are increasingly looking for efficiency in carrying out their processes so that they can be able to serve as many affected people as possible. In this sense, the main objective of this work is to propose a maturity model to assessment of disaster operations and identify strategies that allow the evolution of maturity. To this end, the research based on a systematic literature review, which identified eight models for disaster operations management, and a case study. The Maturity Model for Disaster Processes was proposed based on the systematic literature review. As a first validation, a case study was conducted at the Civil Defense of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to assess the maturity of the response operations. Three different situations in this case study were analyzed: General (Situation 1), a recurring disaster type in the region - the floods in the north and northwest of Rio de Janeiro (Situation 2), and a non-recurring disaster - the COVID-19 pandemic (Situation 3). It was found that, the organization reached final maturity stage 4 (Aurora) for the three situations analyzed, with signs of evolution to the maximum stage (Zenith). Also, as it is recurrent disaster type, disaster of the Situation 2 showed more significant similarities in carrying out disaster response processes compared to the General Situation (1).

Even though supporting affected populations is the raison d’etre for humanitarian action, organisations are frequently not accountable to populations they aim to serve. Despite several reform movements, the consultation and participation elements of accountability to affected populations (AAP), in particular, are still lacking. Specifically, during the design phases of projects, such involvement is critical since major decisions around implementation are taken. Given that donors usually use their power over NGOs to set requirements around financial and results-based management, they could do the same for AAP and make funding conditional on meeting requirements. The puzzle of this research is (Q1) to what extent do donors try to enhance AAP at the project design stage by setting AAP requirements and (Q2) what motivates donors to set these requirements and given many do not set them, what holds them back. In total, nine (n=9) problem-centred expert interviews were led with donor and NGO representatives, which were complemented by an analysis of n=14 donor documents related to the project design phase. During the data collection and analysis process, it became apparent that a sole focus on top-down approaches through requirements would leave out relevant constraints around AAP requirements in project design phases. Thus, driven by the interview data, two additional questions were included: (Q3) What are possible reasons why the requirements set by donors are not successful in improving AAP practices? (Q4) How could these constraints be overcome?  For Q1, it was found that there is no systemic inclusion of AAP requirements in project design phases by donors. Though there are positive examples and donors emphasize their engagement, NGO representatives shared the view that there is no real push through requirements for the two more complex elements of AAP, namely consultation and participation. The main bottleneck for donors to set stricter requirements were competing priorities, while their main motivation to do so apart from intrinsic motivations was found to be past failure in combination with hope for effectiveness and efficiency gains (Q2). The additional constraints identified as hampering successful implementation of such requirements were NGO, discursive and systemic constraints, which dealt with resource scarcity, process constraints, conceptual unclarity and misunderstandings as well as constraints related to the humanitarian context and the delivery of aid through projects (Q3). Solutions presented by interviewees underline the importance of updated funding procedures, establishing clarity around the concept, and advancing cash-based programming and the localization agenda (Q4). Finally, the grounded theory developed from the interview and analysis process explains the limited success of donor AAP requirements in the following way: First, such requirements are not established in the first place if hindered by donor bottlenecks. If motivations are stronger than bottlenecks, such requirements do not automatically lead to the implementation of meaningful AAP practices, since the requirements are not adapted to the wider context. Donors (1) do not take NGO constraints into account, (2) do not fully realize discursive constraints and (3) only take limited action against systemic constraints. When setting requirements, donors need to inform their strategies by considering these constraints in setting meaningful requirements.

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Following unprecedented earthquakes in 1999, highly centralized Turkey initiated reforms that aimed to improve disaster management collaboration and to empower local authorities. In 2011, two earthquakes hit the country anew affecting the city of Van and town of Erciş in Turkey’s southeast. In attempts to reduce disaster risk, global disaster risk reduction frameworks and disaster scholars and practitioners advocate collaborative and decentralized disaster management strategies. This thesis investigates how such strategies are received in a centralized and hierarchical national political-administrative system that largely is the anti-thesis of the prescribed solutions. More specifically, this research investigates the barriers and prerequisites for disaster management collaboration between both public and civil society actors in Turkey (during preparedness, response, and recovery) as well as how Turkey’s political-administrative system affects disaster management collaboration and its outcomes. The challenges to decentralization of disaster management are also investigated. Based on forty-four interviews with actors ranging from national to village level and NGOs, the findings suggest that the political-administrative system can alter the relative importance, validity, and applicability of previously established enabling or constraining conditions for collaboration. This may in turn challenge previous theoretical assumptions regarding collaboration. By adopting a mode of collaboration that fit the wider political-administrative system, collaborative disaster management progress was achieved in Turkey’s national level activities. Although there were exceptions, collaboration spanning sectors and/or administrative levels were generally less forthcoming, partly due to the disjoint character of the political-administrative system. Political divergence between local and central actors made central-local collaboration difficult but these barriers were partly trumped by other prerequisites enabling collaboration like interdependence and pre-existing relations. The findings suggest that the specific attributes of disasters may both help and hinder disaster management collaboration. Such collaboration generally improved disaster response. The findings also indicate that the decentralization attempts may have been premature as the conditions for ensuring a functional decentralization of disaster management are presently lacking. Decentralization attempts are commonly suggested to increase local capacity and local participation but the findings of this dissertation suggest that in Turkey, these commodities may currently have better chances of being increased by refraining from decentralization.

When governments are unable or unwilling to provide necessary relief to communities, local faith-based congregations (FBCs) step in and fill the gap. Though shown to provide for so many needs following disaster, FBCs have largely been left out of the institutional emergency management cycle. The aim of this study was to explore the role of FBCs in the disaster response and recovery process and investigate how recovery impacts FBCs. The primary objective of this study is to gain a better understanding of FBCs and how to better integrate them into the formal emergency management process.The main questions were as follows: First, what is the role of FBCs during the disaster recovery process? Second, how do FBCs change (temporarily and permanently) during disaster recovery, and what factors may promote or inhibit change? To answer these questions, qualitative semistructured interviews were held to develop a case study of Katy, Texas and its recovery from Hurricane Harvey of 2017. The applied and conceptual implications resulting from this study, which apply to FBCs, researchers, emergency managers, and policy makers, highlight the opportunity to better incorporate FBCs formally into emergency management practices.

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