Tourism destinations are particularly vulnerable to crises and disasters and while a number of tourism specific crisis management models exist to assist managers and to provide a reference point for academics, they unfortunately display a number of limitations which reduce their effectiveness. For example, drawing on organisational crisis management theory as a framework, they fail to account for differences in size and scope between a typical business organisation and a tourism destination. At the same time, the prescriptive, linear, one-size-fits-all structure of the models does not consider the unpredictable, unique nature of crises and disasters, the manner in which they evolve and the distinct characteristics of individual tourism destinations. Furthermore, they presume coordination will automatically occur when, in reality, competition and rivalry often act as a barrier to the implementation of measures to achieve such aims. Beyond these specific limitations, perhaps the most pertinent challenge to contemporary models is that they fail to recognise the chaotic nature of the system and its environment. Various commentators have suggested a chaos and complexity theory approach to tourism crisis management. In this way, the tourism system is viewed as a complex adaptive system, similar to an ecological community, which, despite its chaotic exterior, demonstrates an underlying current of orderliness and a particular aptitude for self-organisation. The ability of a system, under the correct conditions, to self-organise and evolve to an improved state of being has implications for the management of crises and disasters. Nevertheless, despite prompts from academia to investigate further, research has been extremely sparse and the potential of chaos and complexity theory as a method to manage tourism crises has remained relatively unknown. This thesis, therefore, seeks to address the gap in the literature. Its overall purpose is to identify whether the proposed limitations of existing frameworks are demonstrated in practice and to consider whether a complexity-based perspective on tourism crisis and disaster management represents a more viable framework for managers of tourism destinations preparing for and responding to crises. To address this purpose, two case studies were conducted in the context of two tourism crises, namely the 2001 UK Foot and mouth crisis and the 2009 Mexican H1N1 Influenza crisis. Following an interpretivist theoretical approach to the research, a series of semi-structured interviews were performed with relevant participants associated with each crisis and the information gathered was analysed along with media and government documentary evidence pertaining to each crisis. The research serves to substantiate the claim that the proposed limitations diminish the effectiveness of contemporary tourism crisis and disaster models, as the limitations are clearly evident in both case studies. Moreover, the case studies also offer the opportunity to observe manifestations of the elements of chaos and complexity, which enables the conclusion to be drawn that had the Foot and Mouth crisis and the H1N1 Influenza crisis been managed using complexity theory based management strategies, facilitated by the implementation of a ‘learning destination’ type structure, then the crisis response would have been improved.

Diabetes is a condition often placed on the margins of ‘seriousness’. It is often believed to impact minimally on an individual’s everyday life and, while this may be true for some people, living with diabetes is not always experienced so ‘easily’. Research from myriad disciplines has begun to shed light on the complex personal issues of living with the condition, but, with a few exceptions, there is little input from human geography. This thesis hence explores the ‘geographies of diabetes’ in more detail. The findings hinge around a ‘recession’ of the diabetic body in public space. This recession is both discursive and material, caused by the assumptions and expectations of others that diabetes is among the minor of chronic conditions, largely overcome by insulin and ever advancing technologies which enable greater self-control over the diabetic body. Visible diabetic bodies are hence subject to a disciplining gaze, for having transgressed these expectations. This thesis finds that, despite many people displaying their diabetes minimally in public, the condition impacts greatly on a personal level. People with diabetes are aware that their bodies are at risk of both short- and long-term complications more so than if they did not have diabetes. These vulnerabilities serve to create anxious bodies for whom everyday spontaneity is curbed and dependency is heightened. In order to conceal the visible signifier of diabetes, to avoid the disciplining gaze, people ‘perform’ aspects of their self-management, hence further obscuring the anxious realities of living with diabetes. The embodied differences of having diabetes along with the discursive ‘recession’ of the condition, contribute to an ideal of ‘diabetic citizenship’. It is to this ‘diabetic citizen’ – who experiences the condition with few problems, and with any difficulty attributed to personal and moral failing – that many people with diabetes express their frustration. Through the methods of online questionnaires and face-to-face interviews, this thesis raises awareness of the clandestine geography experienced by people with diabetes.

The aim of this thesis has been to reconstruct proxy-climatic conditions from three ombrotrophic mires across the western side of Britain (Bolton Fell Moss, Langlands Moss, Mynydd Llangatwg). Detailed investigations of core material has incorporated the application of a range of palaeoecological techniques including colorimetric humification, plant macrofossil and testate amoebae analyses at high-resolution intervals. Results from the humfication analyses indicate significant fluctuations in mire surface conditions which, in the case of Bolton Fell Moss, appear to be replicatable. Plant macrofossil datasets also record variations in surface conditions, indicated by changes in species composition, although, in contrast to the humification datasets, records obtained from Bolton Fell Moss have been found to differ markedly. Statistical modelling of these raw macrofossil datasets using multivariate techniques has enabled the transformation of the data into indices of relative mire surface conditions, thereby generating proxy-climatic curves which are directly comparable with the humification records. Having identified a number of correlating shifts in relative surface conditions, interpolated timescales were developed for each of the sites investigated using a combination of wiggle-matched AMS dating, lead-210 and spheroidal carbonaceous particle (SCP) analyses. Comparison of the proxy-climate records has led to the identification of correlating shifts in mire surface conditions. A number of these shifts have been found to be associated with established shifts in regional climatic conditions, such as the coldest stages of the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, the AD 540 tree-ring event and the Sub-boreal/Sub-atlantic transition.

In this project apatite fission track and (U-T)/He thermochronometers are used to determine the cooling history of rocks from the coastal (south eastern New South Wales) and the interior (Bathurst area) regions of the eastern Australia high elevation passive margin. Two traverses across the coastal lowlands, escarpment and plateau top are used to determine the tempo and styles of response of the landscape to the continental breakup and sea-floor spreading of the Tasman Sea (85 Ma). The three prevailing models of escarpment evolution namely retreat into a downwarped rift shoulder, escarpment retreat and excavation in place on a high elevation rift shoulder with flexural rebound are described and tested using a previously untested combination of apatite fission track and (U/Th)/He data. The thermochronological data indicate that the coast was affected by a denudational pulse that peaked around 120-100 Ma and that was extinguished by the time of sea-floor spreading. The rapid denudational event caused the removal of 3-4.5 km (depending on the geothermal gradient) of crust at the coast and of approximately 2 km at the present base of the escarpment. The thermochronological data are inconsistent with the downwarped rift shoulder model and the apatite (U-Th)/He data indicate that, while the coast was denuded very rapidly, the coastal lowlands were excavated in place at a much lower pace, and the escarpment reached its present position no later than 60 Ma. This suggests that during continental extension and breakup, rates of denudation at the coast were approximately 80-30m/Myr (depending on the geothermal gradient), whereas at the base of the present escarpment they were about 10-5 m/Myr. The period after sea-floor spreading was characterised by stability and low rates of erosion. The pre-breakup topography, reconstructed using the backstacking technique, is characterised by a considerable relief in the area of the present escarpment. This result confirms the hypothesis that the escarpment evolved pinned to its present position.

Segmentation of remotely sensed data is increasingly used to create spatially connected groups of pixels, commonly called objects, which are then used as the basic spatial unit in land cover mapping via image classification. There are many methods for image segmentation, and numerous outputs are possible, so numerous that is often impractical to classify all of them and then evaluate each. For this reason accuracy assessment of image segmentation is a necessary step to select a suitable result for object-based classification, hopefully the one affording the highest possible classification accuracy. Commonly the assessment of the accuracy of image segmentation is based on only the geometric properties of the objects derived (e.g. shape). A consequence of this approach is that all segmentation errors are regarded implicitly as being equally serious. However, the sensitivity of a specific map user to error may vary as a function of his/her needs and the classes involved. This thesis argues that a more appropriate assessment of a segmentation output is to consider the thematic content of the objects as well as their geometric properties. This allows the assessment to be tailored to the needs of the specific user. A metric that expresses the degree of thematic quality of objects from a user’s perspective, the thematic similarity index (TSI), is proposed. Then, a geometric-thematic method for image segmentation accuracy assessment is described, which combines a traditional method from the literature with the TSI. The perspectives of three users (a wolf researcher, a general user of land cover information, and the climate modelling community) were adopted in several case studies to analyse the TSI and the new method. The results show that the TSI is able to accommodate the user’s needs into image segmentation accuracy assessment, with the geometric-thematic method allowing the selection of a segmentation output more suited to the user than that from the use of the standard geometric-only approach. Furthermore, the use of the geometric-thematic method in operational contexts is illustrated. This includes a proposal for training an image classification in which mixed objects are used for training (which can increase classification accuracy), and using weighted estimators of classification accuracy which are able to assess the quality of a land cover map from the perspective of the user. This thesis thus integrates the user’s needs in all the main stages of an object-based image classification, which proved to be beneficial for land cover mapping production.

Since the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, Venezuela has undergone considerable constitutional and legislative reforms to establish a more participatory form of democracy. Two of Chavismo’s mechanisms for citizen participation form the units of analysis of the thesis: consejos locales de planificación publica (CLPPs) and consejos comunales (CCs). These sought to bring citizen participation into public policy and planning at the municipal and neighbourhood levels, respectively. The thesis draws from democratic and planning theories, engaging with debates in the literature regarding participation and the issues of bringing democratic innovations into representative democratic systems and planning practices and processes. The thesis responds to a gap in the literature regarding how actors involved in CLPPs and CCs understand these instances of participation. The thesis adopted a constructivist approach involving components drawn from new institutionalism (Lowndes and Roberts 2013) and Bevir and Rhodes’ (2012) strand of interpretivism into an analytical model that Hay (2011) coins ‘interpretive institutionalism’. The thesis elicited the meanings and understandings of citizen participation in local policy making and planning processes held by participants of CLPPs and CCs. Such accounts enabled an analysis of what participatory democracy meant to those active in the processes seeking to establish it. Data collection involved 10 months of fieldwork in two municipalities (Chacao and Libertador) in Caracas including semi-structured interviews with CLPP and CC participants; observation of CLPP and CC participants; and review of corresponding municipal documents, academic literature, and news articles. The findings show that participation was widely advocated by CLPP and CC participants. Ideological/ political beliefs and traditions shaped a) the different ways CLPP members (politician versus community members) conceived participation, and b) CC participants’ understanding of state-civil society relationships. The thesis provides a contribution to democratic theory by providing further insights about the challenges in designing, implementing and embedding mechanisms involving citizen participation, particularly the tensions between representative and participatory forms of democracy. Secondly, by operationalizing Hay’s (2011) interpretive institutionalist model in the Latin American socio-economic context, the thesis showed that marrying constructivist approaches to institutionalism and bringing institutionalist dimensions to interpretivism provide valuable analytical and theoretical insights. Furthermore, the findings enabled an additional link between the interpretive and institutionalist dimensions of Hay’s model to be identified.

As the need for regions to convert knowledge within universities into industrial and commercial success is increasingly acknowledged in the knowledge-based economy, universities are no longer considered to be isolated islands of knowledge, but as institutions increasingly engaged with a range of external partners through various types of knowledge networks. Although studies have examined the importance of interactions between academics and businesses in building competitive advantages of regions, there has been much less work considering how the nature of interactions is associated with regional competitiveness. This research explores these issues through a study of the network relationships between universities and businesses in the context of the UK, where uneven regional economic development has long been a feature of the economy. By adopting a critical realist paradigm and employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, this research reveals both ‘what’ knowledge exchange activities are engaged by universities and ‘how’ the intensity and performance of those activities are associated with regional competitiveness. National findings suggest that universities in more competitive regions generate higher income from engaging in knowledge exchange activities than those in uncompetitive areas. However, academics in uncompetitive regions are more actively engaged in knowledge exchange activities than their counterparts in competitive areas. It is also found that the intensity of firm-level interaction with universities is associated with the regional location of firms, especially in the case of smaller firms. In particular, firms located within relatively economically competitive regions tend to be more positively engaged with the use of academic knowledge. Firms in uncompetitive regions have lower levels of demand for academic knowledge, even though there is often sufficient supply. Overall, the study indicates that the competitiveness of regions in the UK is positively associated with a strong demand from businesses for knowledge generated by universities. The complexity of the knowledge exchange process is further highlighted in case studies of university initiatives, which show that universities engage with businesses in a diverse spectrum even at the regional level. It is concluded that future policy intervention targeted at fostering university-industry interactions needs to more fully acknowledge territorial patterns of knowledge exchange.

This thesis has two aims to: a. assess the vulnerability and resilience of traditional societies and those on the threshold of modernisation to volcanic and volcano-related disasters; and b. evaluate the extent to which historical events and their associated responses may inform future policies of disaster management. In order to address these aims this thesis has three objectives, these being: a. to test the strengths and weaknesses of two methodologies, an historical approach based on archival and other information - applied to Etna and Vesuvius and a set of techniques focused around vulnerability and resilience – applied to the Azores; b. to identify traditional strategies of coping and survival during the pre-industrial period in the three case-study areas; and c. to evaluate the potential use of these data in the development of future disaster management plans. During this research techniques from the earth sciences (i.e. field data collection) were combined with those more commonly seen in historical studies (i.e. archival data sources) to draw out the ways in which people have coped in the past to eruptions. Field visits were carried out on Etna, Sicily (Italy) and São Miguel Island, Azores (Portugal). The principal conclusions of this research are:- a. That the historical and vulnerability and resilience approach worked well, respectively for Etna and the Azores. b. Less successful was the application of the historical approach to Vesuvius. In contrast to Etna this reflected amongst other things the fact that the last eruption occurred nearly seventy years ago (i.e. in 1944) and since that time the ‘folk’ memory of volcanic activity has been largely expunged because of rapid economic development combined with population growth. c. In all three case study areas, volcanic earthquakes are an under-stated hazard; the process of development is increasing vulnerability and the practice of popular Catholicism does not prevent responses based on scientific understanding and civil defence planning. The study identifies that future work would benefit from the application of a vulnerability and resilience based methodology grounded within both historical and contemporary contexts.

This thesis considers the uncertainty in forecasts of climate-driven disease risk, focusing on seasonal and decadal timescales. An analysis of the skill of decadal climate predictions is carried out, looking at the first multi-model decadal hindcast set produced as part of the ENSEMBLES project. Some skill in the prediction of global average temperature trends over the forthcoming decade is shown, with no skill evident for precipitation. Focusing on smaller areas shows limited skill in predicting temperature trends and no skill for precipitation trends, suggesting that decadal climate models cannot currently make useful predictions of disease risk. Seasonal climate forecasting skill is then considered. Seasonal hindcasts produced by two research projects, DEMETER and ENSEMBLES, are compared with the most recent version of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast’s seasonal forecast model, System 4. The models are validated over Africa and the Indian subcontinent, and it is shown that in general System 4 forecasts are an improvement over the DEMETER and ENSEMBLES multimodel ensembles, particularly for West Africa. A more in depth study of System 4 is subsequently carried out, comparing the variation in skill between forecast start dates. Forecast value is demonstrated at multiple lead times, with most skill found for West African regions and Botswana and limited skill for India; indicating when and where forecasts can potentially be issued to users. Forecasting malaria is then studied by using Liverpool Malaria Model (LMM) driven by System 4. Skill is demonstrated over Botswana, particularly for forecasts issued in November, validating against laboratory confirmed cases of malaria. This is an improvement on previous work where the LMM was driven with the DEMETER seasonal hindcasts. Where malaria data is not available, System 4-driven LMM hindcasts are compared to LMM driven by ERA-Interim in a tier-2 validation context. Skill is demonstrated at the epidemic fringe of the Sahel and in north west Malawi, whilst the Gulf of Guinea shows no skill. This is consistent with previous work suggesting the LMM performs better in epidemic than in endemic regions. A method for interpreting hindcast validation results as uncertainty quantification is then presented. Finally, the uncertainty in the relationship between seasonal average climate and malaria risk is analysed, using the LMM driven by the 20th century reanalysis dataset. The relationship parameters describing seasonal average climate and malaria risk is explored and impact surfaces are created, relating seasonal average temperature and precipitation to average seasonal malaria incidence. The robustness of these impact surfaces is investigated by comparing the surfaces associated with different LMM survival schemes. A method of combining impact surfaces based on tercile categories is described and implemented and it is demonstrated how the resulting graphic could be integrated with a seasonal ensemble forecast system. Such a tool is potentially useful for decision-makers, allowing an intuitive visual communication of the quantified uncertainty in predicting climate-driven disease risk at seasonal timescales.

With the emergence of the sustainable development paradigm in the 1980s and the growth of the travel industry it seemed inevitable that the two would coincide at one point or another. Emerging as a reaction to mass tourism and environmental destruction, sustainable tourism development is a combination of two main schools of thought; development theory and environmental sustainability. Once assumed to be a passing fad, two decades on the concept has gained widespread acceptance both within the academic circles and governments. Since the early 1990s, the sustainable tourism paradigm and its practical applicability has become the subject of much debate. Although it is widely acknowledged that sustainable tourism is impractical at macro level, it has long been thought that the principles of sustainable tourism development could be successfully applied at micro level. This thesis aims to contest this statement and demonstrate that small scale sustainable tourism development is just as unattainable. Drawing upon existing literature, it aims to weave together tourism and development theory and examine the links and discrepancies between the principles of sustainable tourism development and the wider framework of sustainable development. In doing so it reveals a number of fundamental weaknesses which undermine the viability of sustainable tourism development. In addition to examining the discrepancies and contradictions of the concept, the thesis also forms a link between the principles and practices of sustainable tourism development and a destinations area ‘life cycle’, thereby; providing a framework for its analysis. Using a sustainable tourism development cycle model (STDC), it will show how as a destination area passes through the various stages of tourism development it moves further away from the principles of sustainable development and consequently fails to meet the fundamental principles of sustainable development. Built upon and adapted from Butler’s (1980) ‘tourism area life cycle’ theory, the STDC model questions the sustainability of a tourism destination area and evaluates its progress in implementing the principles of sustainable tourism development as it evolves.