Despite shifts toward a more collaborative approach to emergency management, little scholarly attention has focused on the roles of local public organizations and nonprofits that do not have explicit emergency management missions in disaster response. Scholars and government officials call for identifying key local actors and developing a more collaborative emergency preparedness approaches prior to disaster situations. In practice, emergency officials seldom recognize post-disaster efforts of these local actors. Efforts to anticipate the potential decisions and actions of organizations that do not routinely deal with disasters necessitate a better understanding of how managers perceive their post-disaster related roles and what may account for such perceptions. Focusing on public libraries in the U.S., this study draws on information gathered through surveys and semi-structured interviews with library managers and directors operating in Hampton Roads, Virginia. To further investigate variations in willingness to engage in emergency response among local jurisdictions, the study explores context-related characteristics such as organizational arrangements and features of the policy environment in which library managers operate as well as factors related to individual managerial practices. The study finds that library officials' perceptions vary across libraries. Variations range from a more defensive approach to a more proactive approach. Efforts to account for the extent to which officials would be willing to engage in a more proactive approach should consider both the emergence of individual-managers' entrepreneurial spirit and their involvement in community-based disaster planning. / Ph. D. / This study examines how public managers in organizations that do not routinely deal with emergencies perceive the role of their organizations in responding to natural disasters and explores what may help explain such perceptions. Focusing on public libraries in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, I found that managers’ entrepreneurial spirit combined with their sense of recognition and inclusion in the local emergency preparedness network were associated with willingness to engage in a more proactive approach to disaster response.

Statistics show that chronic heat exposure and extreme heat waves are the leading cause of death amongst natural disasters in urban spaces across the United States, outpacing the likes of more notable phenomena such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes. Heat in urban spaces is not distributed equally due to the urban heat island effect, a phenomenon which significantly elevates temperatures due to the various absorption characteristics of built environment features. Historical discriminatory mortgage lending schemes and planning practices that targeted communities of color have intensified that issue, endangering the health and well-being of marginalized neighborhoods to this day. Although generating feasible design solutions to mitigate the impact of heat in urban spaces represents a substantial challenge, utilizing readily available data sources to garner the social and political support required for actionable change is likely the more complex issue. Because youth are typically less jaded by external social and political influences and will either enjoy the benefits or suffer the consequences related to the built environment for their entire adult life, they possess a unique potential to serve as a vehicle for generating community momentum for the implementation of heat resilience solutions. This thesis explores the spatial distribution of heat throughout neighborhoods in Roanoke, Virginia by exploring both land surface temperature and air temperature discrepancies by Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) classification and census tract. I find that HOLC polygons not labeled "A" possess a considerably higher average temperature than the most "desirable" classification, and that there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between mean land surface temperature (aggregation of Landsat raster files) and census tract socio demographic characteristics such as median household income and percentage of residents aged 65 and over. This thesis also examines the potential of youth-focused science education programs to catalyze the political will necessary to enact resilience planning efforts that no single governmental agency is responsible for. I analyzed the various impacts that artifacts produced by a 2021 science education program conducted with Roanoke City middle school students inflicted on a 2022 focus group comprised of influential Roanoke public officials. I show the reasoning which supports that four primary opportunity and challenge categories – Breaking Down Silos, Spreading Awareness, Places and Venues, and Resources and Funding – can serve as foundational discussion components for heat resilience planning panels in the future. This thesis advances the awareness of disproportionate exposure to heat in urban spaces and contributes to theories attempting to trigger heat resilience planning efforts. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning / Extreme heat presents a deadly threat to people, particularly those who live in cities. Heat is not distributed evenly throughout urban areas, with some places being hotter than others. Climate change is a force which will make that problem worse. As a result, it is important for planners and other leaders to implement strategies to solve that issue. Engaging youth in the planning process is one way to speed that process up. This thesis explores whether neighborhoods in Roanoke, Virginia experience different levels of heat stress. I find that areas which have historically been deemed by the government to be "most desirable" are typically cooler than others. This research also examines the ability of youth education programs to compel relevant decision makers to act on an issue. Through an analysis of a focus group discussion, I show that the experiences and ideas of Roanoke City middle school students encouraged Roanoke City public officials to respond to their concerns. Four major themes related to heat resilience opportunity and challenge areas emerged – Breaking Down Silos, Spreading Awareness, Places and Venues, and Resources and Funding.

Changing weather patterns have led to an increase in the frequency of tornadoes in the socially vulnerable southeast United States. This is concerning to manufactured and mobile homeowners, as these structures are highly vulnerable to tornado impacts. In recent years, the installation of ground anchors on manufactured and mobile homes (MMHs) has emerged as a strategy to mitigate against risks posed by tornadoes and high winds. Although these systems decrease horizontal movement and rollover potential in an MMH, they are not uniformly used throughout the region. This study uses protective motivation theory (PMT) to investigate perceptions of ground anchors among MMH owners. Specifically, this research identifies types of knowledge and experience salient in the context of anchoring and describes the factors that inform residents' threat and coping appraisals in weighing the decision to anchor their MMH. Results showed that participants' previous direct and indirect experience with wind hazard events, coupled with impacts from direct and indirect damage were most salient to anchoring decisions. The experience of psychological trauma from severe weather played a secondary contributing role. Furthermore, among the factors theorized to shape MMH owners' threat and coping appraisals, results showed that hazard severity, vulnerability, and anchoring response cost were most prominently discussed in considering whether to install an anchoring system. Findings from this study could improve the design of educational campaigns about tornado resilience and MMH anchoring.

Advancing the state of disaster operations planning has significant implications given the devastating impress of disasters. Operations management techniques have in the past been shown to advance disaster-planning efforts; in particular, much progress can be noted in its application in the advancement of short-term recovery operations such as humanitarian logistics. However, limited emphasis has been placed on the long-term development scope of disaster operations. This dissertation argues the need for a fundamental shift in the motivation of archetypal disaster planning models, from disaster planning modeled around the emergency of the disaster event, to that of the sustainability of the community. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to address three key issues in regard to sustainability in disaster operations and planning. The first study of this dissertation (Chapter 3) focuses on describing disaster operations management and planning in its current state, examining features unique to sustainability in this context, and finally developing a planning framework that advances community sustainability in the face of disasters. This framework is applied in the succeeding quantitative studies (Chapter 4 and Chapter 5). The second study in this dissertation (Chapter 4) extends the sustainable planning framework offered in Chapter 3, using mathematical models. In particular, the modeling contributions include the consideration of multiple possible disaster events of single disaster type expected in a longer-term decision horizon, under integrated disaster management planning that is geared towards sustainability. These models are assessed using a mono-hazard scenario generator. A pedagogical example based on Portsmouth, Virginia, is offered. The last study in this dissertation (Chapter 5) extends the application of quantitative models to account for the 'multi-hazards' paradigm. While Chapter 4 considered multi-event analysis, the study was limited to a mono-hazard nature (the consideration of only one type of hazard source). This study extends analytical models from mono-hazard to multi-hazard, the consideration of a range of likely hazards for a given community. This analysis is made more complex because of the dependencies inherent in multiple hazards, projects, and assets. A pedagogical example based on Mombasa, Kenya, is offered. / Ph. D.

No / Our aim in this article is to articulate and consider a number of questions concerning the future purpose, scope, and practice of peace studies. Our premise, set out in the first section, is that the current era of growth and globalisation will necessarily give way to some degree of social and economic contraction, as the limits to growth implied by the interacting forces of ecological change and resource dependency are encountered. Against this background, we suggest that ‘peaceful adaptation’ could be an appropriate concept to guide consideration of and responses to future challenges associated with building more sustainable forms of society in a context of ‘less’. The remainder of the paper works through a series of questions regarding the meaning of ‘peaceful adaptation', and the potential roles of peace researchers and educators, taking into account the need for peace studies not only to study and contribute to adaptation processes, but to also to respond to the prospect that current systems for knowledge production, dissemination and maintenance may themselves be vulnerable. In each section, we point to examples of existing work that provide promising starting points for engagement, but also highlight some issues and questions that need further attention, especially from the more normative standpoint(s) of ‘peace’.

Natural disasters exert a profound impact on the world population. In 2012, natural disasters affected 106 million people, forcing over 31.7 million people to leave their homes. Climate change has intensified natural disasters, resulting in more catastrophic events and making extreme weather more difficult to predict. Understanding and predicting human movements plays a critical role in disaster evacuation, response and relief. Researchers have developed different methodologies and applied several models to study human mobility patterns, including random walks, Lévy flight, and Brownian walks. However, the extent to which these models may apply to perturbed human mobility patterns during disasters and the associated implications for improving disaster evacuation, response and relief efforts is lacking. My PhD research aims to address the limitation in human mobility research and gain a ground truth understanding of human mobility patterns under the influence of natural disasters. The research contains three interdependent projects. In the first project, I developed a novel data collecting system. The system can be used to collect large scale data of human mobility from large online social networking platforms. By analyzing both the general characteristics of the collected data and conducting a case study in NYC, I confirmed that the data collecting system is a viable venue to collect empirical data for human mobility research. My second project examined human mobility patterns in NYC under the influence of Hurricane Sandy. Using the data collecting system developed in the first project, I collected 12 days of human mobility data from NYC. The data set contains movements during and several days after the strike of Hurricane Sandy. The results showed that human mobility was strongly perturbed by Hurricane Sandy, but meanwhile inherent resilience was observed in human movements. In the third project, I extended my research to fifteen additional natural disasters from five categories. Using over 3.5 million data entries of human movement, I found that while human mobility still followed the Lévy flight model during these disaster events, extremely powerful natural disasters could break the correlation between human mobility in steady states and perturbation states and thus destroy the inherent resilience in human mobility. The overall findings have significant implications in improving understanding and predicting human mobility under the influence of natural disasters and extreme events. / Ph. D.

Research investigating how same-sex military couples conjointly experience the deployment process is absent. This study employed transcendental phenomenological methods (Moustakas, 1994) to explore the lived experiences of same-sex military couples and the deployment process. In-depth, conjoint interviews were conducted with eighteen individuals: five female couples and four male couples, representing four military branches, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Three thematic categories emerged that revealed the essence of the couples' experiences of deployment: deployment experience is context-dependent, challenges associated with sexual minority status, and learned resilience. Though couples experienced a host of unique challenges related to their minority status and restrictive policies, couples developed adaptive coping strategies that served to mediate the impact of distinctive barriers and restrictions. Findings demonstrate the vulnerability and resilience of same-sex military couples during deployment. Political, clinical, and research implications are discussed. / Master of Science

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand entry-level, live-in residence life professionals' experiences of resilience in the workplace. Resilience is a multilevel, biopsychosocial construct that broadly refers one's ability to maintain or improve positive function in response to adversity (Cicchetti, 2010; Masten and Wright, 2010). Workplace resilience is specifically concerned with such adaptive processes and outcomes in response to job stress. Resilience research has been conducted primarily from a post-positivist, diagnostic perspective that has failed to give attention to the diverse experiences of resilience in different contexts. This study was conducted using a constructivist perspective to develop an understanding of workplace resilience in the unique context of live-in residence life work in institutions of higher education where job stress, burnout, and attrition occur at high rates. Ten participants were purposefully selected through expert referral for two 90-minute, in-depth interviews to discuss their history, experiences, and reflections regarding adversity and resilience in the workplace. Data were analyzed inductively to discover themes regarding resilience for residence life professionals. Findings illuminated participant experiences of workplace adversity and resilience, as well as participant beliefs about themselves and the nature and role of resilience in the workplace context. Discussion of findings resulted in four primary conclusions: (a) adversity and resilience coexist in balance with each other; (b) resilience can be learned, as well as lost; (c) resilience is personal and experienced uniquely by individuals; and (d) resilience is a systems issue that is promoted through partnership. Implications for future policy, practice, and research were discussed. / Ph. D. / Entry-level residence life professionals living where they work experience high rates of job stress, burnout, and attrition. These individual concerns also create challenges for organizational effectiveness. Many studies have uncovered factors related to these issues, but few have considered what promotes perseverance in the face of such adversity. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand entry-level, live-in residence life professionals’ experiences of workplace resilience, a construct that broadly refers one’s ability to maintain or improve positive function in response to adversity in the workplace. This study was conducted with a constructivist approach to understand the individual experiences of diverse participants. Ten participants engaged in two individual 90-minute, indepth interviews to discuss their history, experiences, and reflections regarding adversity and resilience in the workplace. Data were analyzed inductively to discover themes regarding resilience for residence life professionals. Findings illuminated participant experiences of workplace adversity and resilience, as well as participant beliefs about themselves and the nature and role of resilience in the workplace context. Discussion of findings resulted in four primary conclusions: (a) adversity and resilience coexist in balance with each other; (b) resilience can be learned, as well as lost; (c) resilience is personal and experienced uniquely by individuals; and (d) resilience is a systems issue that is promoted through partnership. Implications of these findings suggest that individual and organizational outcomes of adversity and resilience are intertwined, and further understanding and promotion of workplace resilience in this setting could be mutually beneficial by contributing to improved employee wellbeing and performance.

The refugee and newcomer population faces many challenges as they arrive in their host country. Many individuals experience varying degrees of trauma in their country of origin. Trauma can lead to poor mental health outcomes and poor adjustment in host countries. Refugee children in particular may experience post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety as a result of traumatic experiences. Children can be resilient when given opportunities to create relationships and gain confidence. These opportunities can be fostered through various avenues, one of which is the school environment. Refugee students can benefit from various supports provided to them in the school environment. One support that has created positive effects for children is peer mentoring. Peer mentoring programs have benefited students through improved self-efficacy, better adjustment to a new culture, and stronger connections with peers. However, more research on effective educational supports is needed. This study evaluated both mentors and mentees ratings of resiliency as a result of their participation in an 8-week mentoring program. Results indicated that the mentees scores increased significantly while mentors' scores did not. The results, limitations, and implications are further discussed in the document.

The Wallflower Prototype is based on my novel, “Wallflower.” “Wallflower” follows the story of daring trauma survivor, Robyn. She uncovers a dark truth - demons and she-devils look just like her. Armed with her newfound strength and courage, she takes it upon herself to face the darkness and prove that true power comes from within. This novel stemmed from a thought experiment. I pondered a thought-provoking scenario: What if in a society, people's choices were believed to be influenced by malevolent demons, and the terrible atrocities committed by humanity were the work of these dark forces?