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The purpose of this descriptive study is to determine if there is a difference in citizen trust in Orange County government regarding the handling of disaster. Various dimensions like competence, benevolence, and integrity can determine a citizen's trust within its government. Disasters, such as man-made and natural, are described as a disruption to society through widespread damage to people and material. Counties experience man-made and natural disasters. Depending on its response to the incidents, counties can determine if the citizens view the county as a trustworthy and responsible government body. This study explored if there were differences in citizen trust in government response to different disasters and if citizens of different demographics had differing levels of trust. This study found that 1) there is no statistical difference between the average citizen trust scores between the two disasters 2) there is no statistical difference between the average citizen trust scores for the two groups, and 3) there is no statistical difference between the overall average citizen trust score between older and younger generations.

published_or_final_version / SPACE / Master / Master of Arts

This report examines the leadership structures of four disaster recovery housing programs in two Texas communities in order to identify leadership models that contribute to future individual and community resilience. Disaster recovery is a physical and social process that requires both scientific knowledge of best practices and practical local knowledge of community context. The level of a community's physical, organizational, and social capacity relates directly to its ability to deliver needed disaster recovery services. The variation of capacity at all levels of governmental agencies and community organizations across Texas has become dramatically apparent over the last decade of disasters with clear consequences to the success of disaster recovery efforts. Information collected from those involved in the housing recovery efforts from two recent disasters in Texas, Hurricane Dolly in 2008 and the Bastrop Complex Wildfires in 2011, provide a window into the current governance models being employed. Communities in the Rio Grande Valley and Bastrop County are now administering multiple housing recovery efforts through assorted levels of government and community organization. By documenting and analyzing the structure of leadership in each program through quantitative and qualitative methods this report reconstructs the capacities of each leadership model that are relevant to articulated recovery goals. Findings from this analysis reveal opportunities for improvement in the design of future disaster recovery programs at the state and local level. / text

In the early nineties Samoa was hit by two major cyclones, Cyclone Ofa (1990) and Cyclone Val (1991), which caused significant damage and devastation. Although it is more than 15 years since these cyclones, they still factor in people's lives and have impacted on the way individuals and organisations conceptualise disasters in Samoa. The incidence of disasters is increasing globally and Pacific Island nations face ongoing and increasing vulnerability to the impacts of such disasters at both community and national levels. Disasters can result in short and long-term social, economic and environmental consequences and, as Ofa and Val illustrate, entire community survival and livelihood systems can be severely disrupted by a single disaster. As a consequence, disasters continue to pose significant threats to sustainable development in the Pacific region. Villagers from the eastern coast of Savai'i, and Government and NGO agencies in Apia were interviewed during six weeks of fieldwork in Samoa. These interviews and insights gained from participant observation, as well as secondary materials such as maps and official reports are used to explore the ways in which people make sense of disaster and hazard risk in their daily lives and the ways in which their belief-systems (cultural, religious etc.) result in very different understandings of disasters and disaster risk. Building on a growing body of critical disaster literature, this thesis explores the ways in which disasters are more than 'natural' events. It examines the ways in which they are socially constructed, resulting from human actions, rather than 'freak natural events'. This approach challenges dominant understandings of disasters which often underpin disaster planning at both national and regional level, and are often characterised by technical 'fixes'. In contrast, this thesis argues for more locally appropriate understandings of 'disasters' and for the importance of placing disaster events within the context of people's everyday lives and broader development priorities.

4 pp. / Promoting the health and well-being of families during difficult times.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / Recent events in the United States of America and Pakistan have exposed the shortcomings of existing planning in relief and humanitarian assistance in the face of large-scale natural disasters. This thesis develops a two-stage stochastic optimization model to provide guidance in the pre-positioning of relief units and assets, where budget, physical limitations and logistics are taken into account. Stochastic data include the numbers of survivors in each potential affected area (AA), the amount of commodities that needs to be delivered to each AA and the transportation time from each relief location (which reflects sceanrios where, for example, roads are blocked). As first-stage decisions, we consider the expansion of warehouses, medical facilities and their health care personnel, as well as ramp space to facilitate aircraft supply of commodities to the AAs. The second-stage is a logistic problem respresented as a network, where maximizing expected rescued survivors and delivery of required commodities are the driving goals. This is accomplished through land, air and sea transportation means (e.g., CH-53 helicopters configured for rescue missions), as well as relief workers. The model has been successfully assessed on notional scenarios and is expected to be tested on realistic cases by personnel who are involved in relief planning. / Outstanding Thesis

The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review has emphasized the role of humanitarian assistance missions in winning the Global War on Terror. U.S. Pacific Fleet operates in an area prone to both terrorist recruitment and sudden-onset natural disasters that require humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations. The U.S. Navy has unique capabilities to deliver first-response humanitarian assistance. This thesis develops and suggests prepositions for humanitarian assistance pack-up kits that contain emergency relief material commonly used in these missions in order to expedite delivery to those impacted by a disaster.

CHDS State/Local / Military civil support operations following Hurricane Katrina revealed a compelling need for improving the command and control arrangements between the National Guard, operating in Title 32 status subordinate to the governors, and U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) who controlled all of the assigned Title 10 active duty forces subordinate to the President. This details the three mutually exclusive duty statuses of the National Guard, reviews the statutory, strategy and policy environment, and examines the joint military doctrine that covers civil support. It describes the three potential command and control models with their strengths and weaknesses. There is a detailed analysis of the USNORTHCOMS's Defense Support of Civil Authority concept plan with recommended enhancements. The paper concludes that the command and control arrangement is situationally dependent and provides considerations for the commander. There is no directive authority that compels the National Guard to work with U.S. Northern Command. However, there are mutual benefits to working in partnership to create the coordination and communication model organization and procedures for future civil support operations that include the National Guard and USNORTHCOM. The USNORTHCOM commander needs to build trust with the governors, and then get a full time National Guard brigadier general on his staff to complete the coordination with the states. / Staff Engineer, US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM)

New Orleans, Louisiana, was founded in 1718 on what is known today to be unstable land. In 1719, a flood devastated the budding city. Several other strong storms quickly followed and forced reconstruction. The French colonists who built New Orleans had no experience with Louisiana’s climate or repetitive tropical storms and flooding. Damage from disasters occurred so frequently that the difficult work of reconstruction characterized the city’s first few decades. The lack of population of the area generated the sending of criminals and other unwanted individuals from France. These ended up taking an active part in the construction and reconstruction process. This research examines the reasons for founding the city where it still stands today, early challenges confronting New Orleanians, and their adaptation to an inhospitable environment, specifically underpopulation, disasters, and inexperience. This dissertation displays for the first time colonial materials on a large scale: primary sources from various archives originally written in French and translated by the author. Despite concerns that residents would leave their city to seek safer living conditions on higher land or move back to the home country as some did, early New Orleanians displayed a resilience that can be compared to that found recently in the aftermath of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. Other settlements had a different fate and eventually disappeared whereas New Orleans always rebuilt itself after each disaster, showing an exclusive sense of its own survival. Since the location of New Orleans became obvious for commercial purposes, early disasters provided the opportunity to rebuild a new town, more adapted to the needs of the colony. Once that town was built and the other local cities proved to be ineffective as capital of the colony, New Orleans appeared as a suitable choice and therefore colonists started investing more into the future of their city.