published_or_final_version / abstract / Politics and Public Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

One of the common lessons learned from the 11 September Terrorist Attacks in 2001, Southeast Asia Tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was there were major command and control (C2) and information challenges during the crisis response efforts. The Department of Defense (DoD) is currently transitioning to face these global threats of terrorism and natural disasters, as well as support the goals of the new National Strategy, by developing new plans and procedures to improve the coordination, communications and operations between DoD and other entities when responding simultaneously to such complex humanitarian disasters (CHD). In searching for a mobile and adoptable communication solution for military operations, the DoD should consider a C2 system that utilizes advanced commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technology. Hastilyformed networks (HFN) could provide a global broadband network node with internet, voice, video and data capability in a rapidly deployable manner, which offer significant advantages to military and other crisis response activities. The focus of this thesis concentrates on the financial aspects of HFNs in support of humanitarian assistance and/or disaster relief (HA/DR) efforts by U.S. armed forces. This research and analysis of HFNs could present prospective benefits to DoD, which include cost-savings, enhanced emergency response capabilities and improved interagency/international relations. Additionally, this study will provide a recommended model methodology and iterations for future military-use of HFNs in support of the DoD's vision of "transformation."

The field of humanitarian logistics and supply chain management is increasingly the subject of research. Even though there has been some research in the field in the past, the necessity for more research related to the measurement of the effectiveness of humanitarian supply chains is required. Humanitarian supply chain management deals not only with natural disasters but also with man-made disasters. Thus, different types of disasters create different challenges for humanitarian aid. Moreover, the different stages of the disasters require different courses of action. The lack of extended research in the field of humanitarian supply chain and logistics, the increase of the impact of disasters as well as the differences between the commercial and the humanitarian supply chains, make it clear that the sector should find ways to improve its efficiency. Tools and metrics can be used to measure and improve the efficiency of the supply chains. According to literature there are no sophisticated measures of effectiveness for humanitarian logi stics and supply chains. The purpose of this thesis is to identify the main challenges in humanitarian supply chains and what is the role of performance measurements in humanitarian operations. Moreover, the thesis aims to identify an appropriate model for measuring and thus, enhancing performance in the humanitarian supply chains. The research strategy chosen for this study is a holistic multiple case study. The empirical data is collected through interviews. For this research in total 3 organisations’ representatives and 2 volunteers were interviewed. The collected data have been analysed by combining theories and previous studies in the literature. The main findings from analysing the empirical data revealed that, depending on the disaster phase, humanitarian organisations face different challenges in their supply chains. By implementing appropriate performance measurements, the humanitarian organisations can limit the impact of the challenges in the supply chain operations, gain more relevant and precise information regarding the humanitarian operations, and enhance supply chain coordination among different stakeholders. As an outcome, by implementing appropriate performance measurement systems, the humanitarian organisations can overcome some of these challenges in their supply chains, and therefore enhance the overall supply chain performance.

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.

The study of faith-based giving , development and engagement with human catastrophe is only beginni ng to be identified and resear ched by social scientists and other disciplines. Almost all faiths in the world im press upon their adherents to serve and engage in humanitarian aid causes. Some faiths prescribe and proscribe through divine teachings on how adheren ts should go about participating in humanitarian aid causes and set certai n constraints and parameters for its fulfilment as a religious act and duty. Islam is one such religion that requires its adherents to conform to religious acts of giving through the institution of charity which makes up the third article of faith. Muslims the world over are required to give a portion of their surplus income by way of prescribed and optional charities to humanitarian aid causes both within a nd outside of their community. This prescription is incumbent on all Muslims irre spective of the type of society that they live in as long as they profess faith. The Muslim community in South Africa comprises a minority group with diverse socio-historical backgrounds and its demographic position is no different to the majority of the country’s population. It is characterised by Muslims who had slave, indentured, migrant and trading histories who have now made a permanent presence in the southern tip of the African continent. Its social organisation has evolved over time and currently as a mino rity group it has entrenched itself in all facets of the South African way of life, networking with other diasporic communities and nation states worldwide. It has a well-developed philanthropic infrastructure and is known to have undertaken humanitarian aid causes both within and outside of its community. In post-apartheid South Africa, the Sout h African Muslim community, given the country’s reintegration in the global system after years of political isolation, has played an indelible role in supporting humanitarian aid causes in disaster affected areas. It is in this context that this study examines the role of a Muslim faith-based organisation’s engagement in benevolent disaster related humanitarian aid causes in South Africa. Given the diverse number of faith-bas ed humanitarian organisations amongst Muslims in South Africa, the study undertakes an extensive case study of one faith-based organisation which has a track record in providing such service. The study is preceded by an extensive literature study with a view to formulating a conceptual framework upon which later analysis is undertaken together with the empirical data. It draws on key sociological concepts in the field of philanthropy in order to provide a scientific context to the study. An in-depth analysis is made of religious texts and writings which prov ide the context around which faith-based organisations fulfil their humanitarian aid objectives. The empirical aspect of the study is triangulated using both qualitative and quantitat ive data derived from a select group of donors and volunteers who made up the key respondents in the study. Documentary and conflict analysis were under taken to construct a profile of the case taking into consideration the different aspects of its social organisation. The study concludes with the presentation of the key findings of the research in keeping with its main assumptions and concludes with practical recommendations and how to better align with faith-based organisations engaged in international disaster relief missions with a view to be more effective and pursue sustainable ways of engagement in disaster afflicted areas. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

No abstract available. / Thesis (LL.M.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2006.

This thesis addresses aspects of preparedness, by not-for-profit humanitarian relief organizations, for effectively responding to natural disasters. It asks how not-for-profit organizations, engaged in humanitarian supply chain management, develop capabilities and implement various elements of preparedness. The research methods consist of a combination of case-based research and grounded research in examining two very different organizations, one comparatively small and faith based and the other larger and secular. Data collection consisted of mostly open-ended interviews with representatives of the two organizations. The findings consist of a number of themes centred on the concept of a local focus on vulnerable communities. Associated themes include the importance of establishing a presence in the community, local capacity building, and early needs assessment. These themes are summarized as testable propositions. A summary framework is presented for the integration of international and local supply chains, in preparing to respond to natural disasters.

The interest in the use of fiscal policy as an effective economic policy tool has been revived recently, since the global recession of 2008 hit the world. In spite of a large empirical literature, there remains substantial uncertainty about the size and even the direction of the effects of discretionary fiscal policy. This thesis seeks to investigate the macroeconomic effects of discretionary fiscal policy in the short term, highlighting several methodologies for identifying discretionary fiscal policy. In Chapters 2 and 3, we suggest a new instrument based on the narrative approach for identifying exogenous government spending shocks: natural disaster damages and the subsequent government emergency spending. While applying our methodology to the Korean and the U.S data, we find that our instrument is not only powerful but also superior to military build-ups used by most of the literature. The relief expenditure in the wake of natural disaster has several advantages such as the similarity in scope to general government activity and the easy applicability beyond the U.S. compared to military build-ups. In the analysis of Korean fiscal policy, using our narrative method and the Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) model, we find that government spending shocks increase GDP, consumption, and real wage, which is in line with the New Keynesian model. We also find that the timing is crucial in identifying government spending shocks due to the anticipation effects of fiscal policy. Furthermore, while analyzing the U.S. fiscal policy both at the state as well as national level, we estimate two kinds of non-defense spending multipliers: federal (1.4~1.7) and state (1.5~2.5), which exceed the defense spending multiplier obtained in the literature using military building-ups. In Chapter 4, in regard to the study of effects of fiscal adjustment, we develop the approach based on changes in cyclically adjusted primary balance (CAPB) by including fluctuations of asset price in the CAPB measure and allowing for individual country heterogeneity in the definition of fiscal adjustment. Using our new CAPB in 20 OECD countries, we find that fiscal adjustments have contractionary effects on economic activity in the short term, which is consistent with the result based on the narrative approach. Nevertheless, our results suggest that fiscal adjustments that rely predominantly on spending cuts are less contractionary than those involving tax increases.

This thesis addresses aspects of preparedness, by not-for-profit humanitarian relief organizations, for effectively responding to natural disasters. It asks how not-for-profit organizations, engaged in humanitarian supply chain management, develop capabilities and implement various elements of preparedness. The research methods consist of a combination of case-based research and grounded research in examining two very different organizations, one comparatively small and faith based and the other larger and secular. Data collection consisted of mostly open-ended interviews with representatives of the two organizations. The findings consist of a number of themes centred on the concept of a local focus on vulnerable communities. Associated themes include the importance of establishing a presence in the community, local capacity building, and early needs assessment. These themes are summarized as testable propositions. A summary framework is presented for the integration of international and local supply chains, in preparing to respond to natural disasters.

Disaster researchers have established the determinants of preparedness and mitigation at the household level of analysis. However, at the organizational level, there is limited research and no theory to guide research on the determinants of preparedness and mitigation. The main goal of this study is to answer the question "what are the determinants of mitigation and preparedness at the organizational level?" The data come from a survey of 227 organizations in Memphis, Tennessee. This study uses Tobit regression technique to identify the determinants. This study finds that organizational size and concern over disaster impact are strong positive determinants of mitigation and preparedness in organizations. In addition, there is a significant and non-linear relationship between organizational obstacle and mitigation and preparedness activities. The study concludes with policy implications and recommendations for future studies.