This dissertation presents a collection of manuscripts that describe development of models and model implementation to analyze impact of potential A(H7N9) pandemic influenza outbreak in the U.S. Though this virus is still only animal-to-human transmittable, it has potential to become human-to-human transmittable and trigger a pandemic. This work is motivated by the negative impact on human lives that this virus has already caused in China, and is intended to support public health officials in preparing to protect U.S. population from a potential outbreak of pandemic scale. An agent-based (AB) simulation model is used to replicate the social dynamics of the contacts between the infected and the susceptible individuals. The model updates at the end of each day the status of all individuals by estimating the infection probabilities. This considers the contact process and the contagiousness of the infected individuals given by the disease natural history of the virus. The model is implemented on sample outbreak scenarios in selected regions in the U.S. The sampling results are used to estimate disease burden for the whole U.S. The results are also used to examine the impact of various virus strengths as well as the efficacy of different intervention strategies in mitigating a pandemic burden. This dissertation, also characterizes the infection time during a A(H7N9) influenza pandemic. Continuous distributions including exponential, Weibull, and lognormal are considered as possible candidates to model the infection time. Based on the negative likelihood, lognormal distribution provides the best fit. Such characterization is important, as many critical questions about the pandemic impact can be answered from using the distribution. Finally, the dissertation focuses on assessing community preparedness to deal with pandemic outbreaks using resilience as a measure. Resilience considers the ability to recover quickly from a pandemic outbreak and is defined as a function of the percentage of healthy population at any time. The analysis, estimations, and metrics presented in this dissertation are new contributions to the literature and they offer helpful perspectives for the public health decision makers in preparing for a potential threat of A(H7N9) pandemic.

The purpose of this investigation is to see how economic inequality, stereotypes, and unemployment affect the well-being of people who identify as middle class in central West Virginia. Questions include whether living in a place with high poverty rates, regardless of income, negatively affects a person’s attitude and well-being, and if middle class people are victims of “guilt-by-association” for living in a lower income county. The results of this study may help organizations like the ARC include data on well-being and life satisfaction alongside their economic reports. Moreover, the public may begin to view West Virginia differently, fueling tourism and overall economic growth. Relevant scholarship for this project includes: The Road to Poverty (Billings, Blee), Stigma (Goffman), Glass House (Alexander), Those Who Work, Those Who Don’t (Sherman), Women, Power, and Dissent… (Anglin), Man’s Search for Meaning (Frankl), and The Human Quest for Meaning (Wong). I am conducting phenomenological interviews of twelve people in six distressed counties and also administering the Life Attitudes Scale to determine their level of well-being. I will then use an ethnomethodological approach to analyze the lived experiences of these West Virginians. Specifically, I wish to understand how they confront the forces of Othering and dehumanization imposed on them by both cultural outsiders and regional organizations. In doing so, this study may prove that the social reality and moral framework constructed by the people who live in this area is far closer to the truth than any kind of statistical analysis.

Emergency management coordination in the United States has fallen victim to over a century of strategies to organize, reorganize, consolidate, or decentralize disaster preparedness, planning and response. Regardless of the agency in charge at the federal level, individual citizens have been responsible for their own well-being immediately after any disaster or emergency event for more than 100 years because it takes time to mobilize and deliver aid. The system most often charged with managing that mobilization during an emergency event that exceeds the response capacity of local public safety agencies is the state emergency management network. Many entities in a state emergency management network have different responsibilities during disaster states vs. non-disaster states. Regardless of their role and function, entities need to be able to exchange resources and information with each other, often under time, economic, or other constraints during disasters. This resource exchange generates trust, an essential element of a resilient network. Resilient networks suffer fewer negative impacts from disaster related loss and are more likely to retain collective capacity to respond and help communities recover. The purpose of this study is to explore the ability of individual and state level attributes to explain variability in perception of network resilience. One-hundred fifty one state emergency management agency employees were surveyed regarding their perception of 5 constructs of network resilience (rapidity, redundancy, relationships, resourcefulness, and robustness) and individual level attributes. State level indicators from FEMA, NEMA, American Human Development Index, and Social Vulnerability Index were also analyzed. Overall, it was found that the individual attribute of perception of network integrity had the most influence on perception of network resilience, followed by perception of community resilience and state level attributes including disaster experience, state well-being, and number of full time state emergency management agency employees. These findings can improve network resilience by informing state emergency management network development activity. Networks that increase member opportunities to develop relationships of resource and information exchange will increase their resilience. That increased network resilience impacts community resilience because, as Winston Churchill's wise words during World War II reconstruction advise, "We shape our communities and then they shape us".

This study aims to apply a rural perspective in an area where the politics assume an urban norm. Considering the special circumstances in the rural areas of Sweden in terms of geographics and access to services it is substantial to map in what ways these areas differ from the urban life. Hence, this study constitutes a contribution to crisis management in Sweden by introducing the rural perspective and applying in what ways social capital plays a role in strengthening the community resilience. Previous studies have shown that the informal household preparedness is essential to the rural life and how knowledge and experience makes a difference in how different households prepare for crisis. The study is qualitative with an inductive approach and utilizes both an interview study based on semi structured interviews as the main empirical material, as well as a text study to provide supplementary empirical evidence to the conclusions. The informants that take part in the study provides three different practical perspectives along with further empirical material to broaden the conclusions.

The occurrence of devastating natural disasters in the past several years have prompted communities, responding organizations, and governments to seek ways to improve disaster preparedness capabilities locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. A holistic approach to design used in the aerospace and industrial engineering fields enables efficient allocation of resources through applied parametric changes within a particular design to improve performance metrics to selected standards. In this research, this methodology is applied to disaster preparedness, using a community's time to restoration after a disaster as the response metric. A review of the responses from Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, among other prominent disasters, provides observations leading to some current capability benchmarking. A need for holistic assessment and planning exists for communities but the current response planning infrastructure lacks a standardized framework and standardized assessment metrics. Within the humanitarian logistics community, several different metrics exist, enabling quantification and measurement of a particular area's vulnerability. These metrics, combined with design and planning methodologies from related fields, such as engineering product design, military response planning, and business process redesign, provide insight and a framework from which to begin developing a methodology to enable holistic disaster response planning. The developed methodology was applied to the communities of Shelby County, TN and pre-Hurricane-Katrina Orleans Parish, LA. Available literature and reliable media sources provide information about the different values of system parameters within the decomposition of the community aspects and also about relationships among the parameters. The community was modeled as a system dynamics model and was tested in the implementation of two, five, and ten year improvement plans for Preparedness, Response, and Development capabilities, and combinations of these capabilities. For Shelby County and for Orleans Parish, the Response improvement plan reduced restoration time the most. For the combined capabilities, Shelby County experienced the greatest reduction in restoration time with the implementation of Development&Response capability improvements, and for Orleans Parish it was the Preparedness&Response capability improvements. Optimization of restoration time with community parameters was tested by using a Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm. Fifty different optimized restoration times were generated using the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm and ranked using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution. The optimization results indicate that the greatest reduction in restoration time for a community is achieved with a particular combination of different parameter values instead of the maximization of each parameter.

La plupart des écosystèmes sont aujourd'hui soumis à une pression anthropique croissante. Les études portant sur l'effet des activités humaines sur la biodiversité se multiplient mais elles se focalisent, principalement pour des raisons méthodologiques, sur un nombre restreint de groupes taxonomiques. L'originalité de ces travaux repose sur l'application d'une approche basée sur l'ADN environnemental permettant d'accéder à l'ensemble de la diversité biologique. Elle a ici été utilisée pour étudier l'impact des activités anthropiques sur les communautés biologiques et la résilience de ces dernières, à travers différentes échelles spatiales et temporelles. Dans une première partie, les communautés édaphiques, sous l'influence de diverses perturbations anthropiques, ont été caractérisées grâce à l'ADN contenu dans les sols. Ces études, réalisées dans différents milieux, mettent en évidence l'impact direct des activités humaines et leur influence sur les paramètres biotiques et abiotiques déterminant la distribution spatiale de la biodiversité des sols. La seconde partie se propose d'examiner l'impact à long terme des activités anthropiques au travers d'un exemple particulier en milieu de montagne. L'ADN contenu dans les archives sédimentaires lacustres a permis de retracer l'histoire des activités pastorales au cours de l'Holocène mais également les changements environnementaux que ceux-ci ont engendrés dans le bassin versant. L'approche mise en œuvre se révèle pertinente pour étudier à la fois les changements induits par les perturbations humaines sur les communautés et les facteurs influençant leurs dynamiques. Les résultats obtenus mettent notamment en lumière l'impact à long terme qu'exercent les activités anthropiques sur les communautés biologiques via les modifications profondes qu'elles génèrent sur les caractéristiques abiotiques du milieu. / Most ecosystems undergo an increasing anthropogenic pressure. Studies about the effects of human activities on biodiversity are proliferating but they focus on few taxonomical groups, mainly for methodological reasons. The originality of this work is based on the application of an approach based on environmental DNA that allows access to the biodiversity as a whole. It was used here to study the impact of anthropogenic activities on biological communities and the resilience of these latter, across different spatial and temporal scales. In the first part, edaphic communities under the influence of several human disturbances were characterized from soil DNA. These studies, performed in various environments, bring out the direct impact of human activities and their influence on biotic and abiotic parameters driving spatial distribution of soil biodiversity. In the second part, long-term impact of human activities was investigated through the analysis of lake sediments in the Alps. DNA from lacustrine sediments allowed to reconstruct livestock farming history over the Holocene and environmental changes that they induced in the catchment. We showed that this approach was relevant to study both changes generated by human disturbances on communities and factors driving their dynamics. Our results highlight the long-term impact of anthropogenic activities on biological communities, in relation to the alteration of environmental characteristics.

Submitted by Milenna Moraes Figueiredo (milennasjn@gmail.com) on 2016-03-31T18:30:16Z No. of bitstreams: 1 tese cris pos ata mexida.pdf: 4445497 bytes, checksum: c415924b20ba6327a1bc87b59f7173fa (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-31T18:30:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese cris pos ata mexida.pdf: 4445497 bytes, checksum: c415924b20ba6327a1bc87b59f7173fa (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / A conjuntura planetária de crise atual é definida por um sistema econômico insustentável diante da capacidade limitada dos ecossistemas em suportar o atual nível de consumo. Este é ditado por modos de vida e de produção preconizadas pelo capitalismo, o que provoca alterações na dinâmica e na coesão das redes de apoio social. Assim, surge um novo modelo de sociabilidade marcado pelo despreendimento ou inexistência das redes de pertencimento social e pela exclusão social de grandes contingentes populacionais. Este é o desafio: criar formas alternativas e sustentáveis de sociabilidade. Torna-se, portanto, cada vez mais relevante a formulação e implantação de Tecnologias Sociais para que, entre outras coisas, sejam fortalecidos os vínculos sociais. As Tecnologias Sociais com foco na inclusão social e na garantia do direito à convivência familiar e comunitária podem contribuir para a formação de cidadãos mais conscientes e comprometidos com seus ambientes. Tal proposição está diretamente relacionada com a perspectiva da Educação Ambiental, pois promove o cuidado nas relações com os outros seres vivos, humanos e não-humanos. Diante desta realidade, foi elaborado esse projeto de tese no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação Ambiental, na linha da Educação Ambiental não formal, tendo como temática o estudo da experiência Rede Família e suas interfaces com a educação ambiental, com as terias sobre tecnologias sociais e com a promoção de resiliência comunitária. O estudo teve como objetivos descrever e investigar a eficácia da metodologia desenvolvida pela experiência Rede Família e verificar se a mesma se constitui em uma tecnologia social, em conformidade com os critérios das definições de autores contemporâneos. Buscou-se comprovar sua eficácia e sua possibilidade de ser reaplicada em situações de risco, especialmente as que levam ao afastamento de crianças e adolescentes do convívio familiar; e, investigar o seu impacto na garantia do direito à convivência familiar de crianças e adolescentes acolhidos institucionalmente e para garantia da provisoriedade desta medida. A metodologia escolhida para este estudo foi a “Inserção Ecológica” que propõe a imersão dos pesquisadores nos ambientes a serem estudados, tendo como procedimentos de coleta de dados: análise documental, observações in loco e 15 entrevistas individuais com os profissionais de diferentes áreas que representavam e realizavam o trabalho da Rede Família. Para análise dos dados foi utilizada a Análise Textual Discursiva de Moraes & Galiazzi. Durante o período de análise foram acompanhadas 68 famílias (algumas destas famílias já tinham seus filhos reintegrados antes do período de análise). Foram desinstitucionalizados 85 crianças e adolescentes: 68 crianças e adolescentes foram reintegradas em suas famílias de origem e 17 colocadas em famílias substitutas. Das crianças e adolescentes que voltaram ao convívio familiar até setembro de 2012 (data da última coleta de dados) apenas 04 foram novamente institucionalizadas. Portanto, os resultados da pesquisa comprovam a eficácia da metodologia desenvolvida pela rede de cooperação Rede Família e foram encontradas todas as dimensões e características de tecnologia social através das análises das observações, documentos e falas dos entrevistados. Deve-se ressaltar em especial que a dimensão educativa da TS apresenta interfaces com a Educação Ambiental. Ademais, a experiência Rede Família denotou resultados ligados aos cinco pilares de resiliência comunitária apontados pela literatura. Em suma, Rede Família é uma metodologia de Tecnologia Social passível de ser reaplicada para garantir a provisoriedade da medida de acolhimento institucional e o direito de crianças e adolescentes à convivência familiar e comunitária. Por fim, a experiência analisada é importante para promover a implantação das ações do Plano Nacional de Promoção, Proteção e Defesa do Direito de Crianças e Adolescentes à Convivência Familiar e Comunitária. / The conjuncture of planetary crisis is defined by an unsustainable economic system of the limited capacity of ecosystems to support the current level of consumption. This is dictated by lifestyle and production advocated by capitalism, which causes changes in the dynamics and cohesion of social support networks. Thus, a new model of sociability is marked by detachment or lack of networks of social belonging which causes social exclusion of large populations. This is the challenge: to create alternative and sustainable forms of sociability. It is therefore increasingly important to the formulation and implementations of social technologies to, among other things, have strengthened social bonds. Social Technologies with focus on social inclusion and those that ensure the right to family and community live can contribute to the formation of citizens more aware and committed to their environments. This proposition is directly related to the perspective of Environmental Education and may promote caring relationships with other living beings, human and non-human. Given this reality, this PhD thesis was designed as project to be developed at the Post Graduate Program in Environmental Education, in line with the non-formal environmental education. The subject of the study is the experience of Family Network (REDE FAMÍLIA) and its interfaces with environmental education, with the concepts of social technologies and the promotion of community resilience. The study aimed to describe and investigate the effectiveness of the methodology developed by the Family Network experience and see if it constitutes a social technology, in accordance with the criteria of the definitions of contemporary authors. We tried to prove its effectiveness and its ability to be reapplied at risk situations, especially those that lead to the removal of children and adolescents from family. It was also investigated their impact on the guarantee of the right of those children to family life and their rights to received a temporary measure of institutionalization. The methodology chosen for this study was the "Ecological Engagement" that proposes the researchers immersion in the contexts to be studied. The procedures of data collection were: document analysis, observations in loco and 15 individual interviews with professionals from different fields representing and performed the work of the Family Network. Data analysis was done following Textual Analysis of Discursive of Moraes & Galiazzi. During the period of analysis there were 68 families who were followed (some of these families had their children back before the period of end of analysis). There were 85 de-institutionalized children and adolescents: 68 were reintegrated in their families of origin and 17 placed in foster care families. From the children and adolescents who returned to family until September 2012 (date of last data collection) only 04 were institutionalized again. Therefore, overall results show the effectiveness of the methodology developed by the cooperation network Family Network and all the dimensions and characteristics of social technology were found through the analysis of the observations, documents and speeches of respondents. It should be noted in particular that the educational dimension of ST presents interfaces with Environmental Education. Furthermore, the experiment results denoted that Family Network is linked to the five pillars of community resilience mentioned by the literature. In short, Family Network is a methodology of Social Technology that can be reapplied to ensure the provisional measure of institutional care and the right of children and adolescents to family and community lives. Finally, the experience is considered important to promote the implementation of the actions of the National Plan for the Promotion, Protection and Defense of the Right of Children to Family and Community.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the well documented health disparities affecting racial and ethnic minorities, particularly those living in underserved urban settings. Due to historic and contemporary structural racism, these areas are often food deserts, lack adequate access to primary care services, and have higher rates of maternal and infant mortality. The lack of public health infrastructure to respond to emergencies, such as pandemics, can be rapidly met with collective action from communities to take care of their most vulnerable. After providing a basic overview of how structural racism has created the present-day disparities seen in communities such as North Philadelphia, this thesis investigates and makes the case for the capacity of these resilient communities to take care of themselves. To this end, I describe the work of North10 Philadelphia, Fabric Masks for North Philly, and the Maternal Wellness Village—community-based organizations that rapidly pivoted their work to fill the unmet needs of people in North Philadelphia related to food insecurity, personal protective equipment, and childbirth preparation and social support, respectively. I describe the utilization of the services provided by these groups and evaluate the evolution of their work from the onset of the pandemic through present day. Following each case study, I share the stories of the leaders behind each project to give voice to the people fighting for the health and wellbeing of their community. Lastly, I reflect on my positionality as a Black woman and medical student at a large academic institution partnering with these groups and assert the need to maintain partnerships with these and similar organizations to ensure the sustainability of their programming in the long term. / Urban Bioethics

Our research paper looks at the sustainability challenge as an example of complexity in interrelated nested systems (or meta-problem) and we further explore the consequences of disruptive events induced by climate change (ie. Extreme Climate Events). Due to their potential effects on adaptive capacities of systems at all levels (macro, meso and micro) and the need for Strategic Sustainable Development (SSD) to develop meta-solutions (non-isolated, non-reinforcing) we focus on community-based interventions and participatory facilitation processes. Therefore, we enquire what might a process look like that supports a community’s psychological resilience and strategic sustainable development following a disruptive event. A way to reinforce a community’s adaptive capacities is through making meaning collaboratively and such a process can be supported by the use of stories and narrative. To this intent, we focus on the use of Collective Narrative Practices (CNP) within the implementation process (ABCD process) of the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD). CNP promote desired narratives and strengthen communities’ psychological resilience while the FSSD ensures the development of meta-solutions and their practical application (through the ABCD). Throughout a five-step exploration, we test their theoretical compatibility, interview FSSD and CNP practitioners, design an initial Process Prototype, test its validity by interviewing practitioners with expertise in both fields, and develop a final Process Prototype which embeds recommendations, guidelines and tools. Finally, our paper initiates the academic study of the linkage between FSSD and CNP and is aimed to guide practitioners of both fields to discern an effective way to facilitate the emergence of appropriate responses in a community, while maintaining or rebuilding its resilience and complying with SSD core principles.

Sammanfattning Bakgrund: Resiliens är ett begrepp som används i allt större utsträckning inom risk och katastrofforskningen för att beskriva samhällets motståndskraft mot, förmåga att återhämta sig från samt utvecklas positivt efter större naturhändelser. Forskning visar på vikten av att involvera alla nivåer i samhället för att skapa resiliens vilket även uttrycks i internationella ramverk för katastrofriskreducering, klimatanpassning och hållbar utveckling. Det är framförallt på den lokala nivån som konsekvenserna av extrema naturhändelser manifestera och måste hanteras vilket innebär att allmänheten anses vara viktig att involvera i det katastrofriskreducerande arbetet för en ökad resiliens. Detta innebär ett så kallat ”bottom-up” sätt att arbeta. En faktor som enligt forskningen påverkar risken för katastrofer är olika sårbarheter i samhället. Hur sårbart ett samhälle är påverkas bland annat av ekonomiska, ekologiska och sociala faktorer och hur resurser är fördelade. Vissa grupper i samhället pekas ofta ut som mer sårbara, och ett led i att skapa resiliens är att tillgodose dessa gruppers specifika behov i relation till katastrofrisker. Teorier och modeller gällande samhällets resiliens mot katastrofer är ofta framtagna med fokus på miljöer med mer frekventa och dramatiska naturhändelser, och samhällen som präglas av en högre grad av socioekonomiska skillnader än vi har i dagens Sverige. Ett förändrat klimat och andra globala processer påverkar även det svenska samhället. Svenska staten och dess myndigheter påtalar allt mer vikten av att arbeta utifrån ett resiliensperspektiv i samhällsbyggandet. I den svenska kontexten ligger ett stort ansvar gällande risk och krishantering på den kommunala nivån, samt även på den enskilda individen, vilket kan tänkas borga för att involvera allmänheten i katastrofriskreduceringen och tillika skapa ett resilient lokalsamhälle. Syfte: Syftet med studien är trefaldig. Primärt syftar den till att få en övergripande förståelse för hur personer som är verksamma inom risk och krishantering på lokal nivå i en svensk kommun ser på att involvera allmänheten i det katastrofriskreducerande arbetet utifrån ett resiliensperspektiv. Sekundärt syftar studien till att undersöka hur man förhåller sig till olika gruppers behov i arbetet utifrån ett sårbarhetsperspektiv samt att undersöka relevansen av ett befintligt teoretiskt ramverk för community resilience i en svensk kontext. Metod: Studien är en kvalitativ explorativ fallstudie av Örebro kommun med en abduktiv ansats. Genom en kombination av strategiskt urval och snöbollsurval har nyckelpersoner som är verksamma inom kommunal verksamhet samt frivilligorganisationer inkluderats i studien. Datainsamlingen bestod av semistrukturerade intervjuer som transkriberats och vidare analyserats genom kvalitativ textanalys. För att stärka studiens validitet har även kommundokument studerats för att möjliggöra en triangulering. Resultatet diskuteras utifrån teorier om resiliens, risk-governance och sårbarhet för katastrofer samt ett teoretiskt ramverk för community resilience. Resultat: Resultatet visar på: 1) en positiv syn hos respondenterna på att involvera allmänheten, framförallt som en resurs i den akuta krishanteringen genom att nyttja frivilliga, 2) möjligheter med att involvera allmänheten genom relationsbyggande nätverk och ökad samverkan med civilsamhället för att få information om hur människor upplever sin verklighet och vilka behov allmänheten har gällande information och stöttning, 3) hinder avseende kommunikation och samverkan mellan kommun och allmänhet vilket delvis kopplades till att det saknas användbara verktyg och att ny teknik inte nyttjas fullt ut, 4) brist på kontinuitet i samverkan mellan civilsamhället och kommunen och låg frekvens av större händelser, 5) ett bristande engagemang från allmänhetens sida. Resultatet pekar även på att resiliensramverket är relevant i den svenska kontexten. / Summary Background: Resiliens is a concept that is increasingly used in risk- and disaster research to describe society's resistance to, ability to recover from and to develop positively after major natural events. Research shows the importance of involving all levels of society in order to create resilience against disasters and is expressed in international frameworks for disaster risk reduction, climate change and sustainable development. Since the consequences of extreme natural events primarily manifests at the local level, they need to be locally managed. The importance of involving the public in disaster risk reduction, also called the “bottom-up approach” with the aim of building resilience is thus highlighted. One factor affecting societal disaster risk is vulnerability. How vulnerable a society is to disasters is influenced by economic, ecological and social factors and the distribution of resources. Certain groups in society are often referred to as more vulnerable and one part of building resilience against disasters is to cater to the specific needs of these groups in relation to disaster risks. Theories and models of societal resilience against disasters are often developed with focus on environments with more frequent and dramatic natural events and societies that are characterized by a greater degree of socio-economic differences than that of today's Sweden. But a changing climate and other global processes also affect the Swedish society. The Swedish state and its authorities increasingly emphasize the importance of taking a resilience perspective on societal development. The responsibility for risk and crisis management in Sweden is primarily focused at the municipal level, as well as on the individual, which could warrant the involvement of the public in disaster reduction in order to build a resilient local community. Purpose: The purpose of the study is threefold. It primarily aims at gaining an overall understanding of the views of individuals, involved in risk and crisis management at local level in Sweden, upon involving the public in disaster risk reduction from a resilience perspective. Secondarily, the study aims at investigating how the needs of different groups in the community is incorporated into the work, based on a vulnerability perspective, and thirdly to investigate the relevance of an existing theoretical framework for community resilience in a Swedish context. Method: The study was designed as a qualitative exploratory case study of Örebro municipality with an abductive approach. Through a combination of strategic selection and snowballing, key people working in the local council and non-governmental organizations have been included in the study. The data collection consisted of semistructured interviews that were transcribed and further analyzed through qualitative text analysis. In order to strengthen the validity of the study, municipal documents were studied to enable triangulation. The results were discussed through theories of resilience, risk governance and disaster vulnerability as well as a theoretical framework for community resilience by Norris et al. (2008). Results: The results show: 1) a positive view upon involving the public, primarily as a resource in emergency crisis management by using volunteers, 2) opportunities for involving the public through relational networking and enhanced cooperation with civil society, in order to gain information and knowledge on how people perceive their reality and the needs of the public regarding information and support, 3) communication and cooperation barriers between the municipality and the public are linked to the lack of useful tools and that new technologies are not fully utilized, 4) a lack of continuity in civil society and municipality collaboration, low frequency of major events, and lack of widespread commitment among the public. The result indicates that the resilience framework is also relevant in the Swedish context.