Community resilience to disasters is an affected area’s ability to rebound after a catastrophic event. The mounting frequency and scale of natural disasters, increasing urbanization, a growing reliance on interdependent technologies and infrastructure systems, and inflated expectations of interventions are responsible for greater disaster vulnerability and demonstrate the need to develop more resilient communities. Given the increasing shocks of natural disasters, a more complete understanding of resilience is important for creating safer, more sustainable communities. One factor that is known to impact resilience is social networks. Urban planning research has shown that walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods can encourage the development of social networks and place attachment through an increase in interactions and a higher density of neighborhood amenities, including characteristics of the built environment that influence social networks, such as varied land uses and pedestrian-oriented design. The built environment connects residents to a place and can serve as a benchmark for recovery. Therefore, it is possible that the traditional planning domain of urban design can be harnessed to foster greater resilience by facilitating stronger social networks. In order to determine the legitimacy of this supposition, this research examines how social networks and the built environment create greater resilience to disasters. Given that social networks increase community resilience to all types of disasters, social networks are shown to be influenced by certain types of space, and the built environment is a common intervention for planners, this research explores the potential for creating cities that are more resilient by creating spaces that foster social networks. The Mississippi Gulf Coast was chosen as a case study area in order to explore the above relationships. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the region, resulting in massive wind and storm surge damage to the Mississippi Coast. Communities in the area have recovered at varying rates and levels. Therefore, this region provided an opportunity to contrast higher and lower resilience communities and to test the above research questions. The research was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, a quantitative model was developed in order to address whether there are statistically significant effects on resilience due to the built environment. In the second stage, a qualitative case study analysis of communities was undertaken using interviews with local residents. The results demonstrate that certain aspects of the built environment are associated with greater resilience, including intersection density, net residential density, the density of historic sites, and community amenities where social networks gather. Furthermore, urban design features with the greatest capacity to increase resilience were also useful features for the types of local social networks that were found to be most important for resilience.

Over the past 40 years, coral cover has reduced by as much as 80%. At the same time, Coral Reefs are coming under increasing threat from hurricanes, as climate change is expected to increase the intensity of hurricanes. Therefore, it has become increasingly important to understand the effect of hurricanes on a coral population. This Thesis focuses on the reef-building coral Montastraea annularis. This species once dominated Caribbean Coral Reefs, but is fast being replaced by faster growing more opportunistic species. It is important that the underlying dynamics of the decline is understood, if managers stand any chance of reversing this decline. The aim of this Thesis is to investigate the effect of hurricane activity on the dynamics of the reef-building coral Montastraea annularis. To achieve this the Integral Projection Model (IPM) method was adopted and the results compared to those produced using the more traditional method of Population Projection Matrix (PPM) method. The models were fitted using census data from June 1998 to January 2003, which described the area of individual coral patches on a sample of ramets on Glovers Reef, Belize. Glovers Reef is a marine reserve that lies 30km off the coast of Belize and 15km east of the main barrier reef. Three hurricanes struck Glovers Reef during the study: Hurricane Mitch (October 1998), Hurricane Keith (September 2000) and Hurricane Iris (October 2001). The data have been divided by two different methods in order to test two research questions, firstly if the initial trauma following a hurricane affects the long term dynamics of a population and, secondly, if the dynamics exhibited during a hurricane varied with hurricane strength. In this Thesis five main results are shown: 1. All models for all divisions of data are in long term decline. 2. As initial trauma increased, the long term growth rates decreased, conversely the short term extremes increased. 3. Fragmentation is more likely as patch size increased and more likely under stronger hurricanes. 4. Integral Projection Modelling painted a similar picture to Population Projection Matrix models and should be a preferred method of analysis.5. Interaction of the IPMs can be used to model the changing occurrence of hurricanes under climate change. It is shown that with increased intensity, the population could become extinct 6.3 years sooner. This research is the first step in modelling coral patch populations by the IPM method. It suggests possible functional forms and compares the results with the PPM method. Further research is required into the biological functions which drive fragmentation, the method by which large patches divide into groups of smaller patches. The conclusions from this Thesis add to the growing body of knowledge concerning the response of coral species to hurricanes, focusing on the importance of understanding patch dynamics, in order to understand colonial dynamics.

The following thesis examines the development of the Louisiana Superdome from a concept that created division amongst the people of Louisiana, including those in the New Orleans metropolitan area, to a facility that would serve as, "a symbol of our recovery". This thesis begins with the fanfare and euphoria from the reopening of the Superdome in September 2006 following millions of dollars worth of damage from Hurricane Katrina and from those using it as a "shelter of last resort". It then introduces some of the major players in the Superdome's development from a divisive concept into a symbol of the community. This thesis examines the factors in the evolution of the meaning of the Superdome for those in the surrounding communities. The factors include political ideology, economic conditions, race relations, and entertainment.

Beneath the Surface is a collection of seven individual literary nonfiction essays. Five of the essays are personal essays, and three come from the author's contribution to UNO's Katrina Narrative Project. The collection represents the author's cumulative body of work upon completion of her MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing at UNO. Titles include: "Beneath the Surface, " "Hello, Harry, " "My One-Summer Bike, " "Just Like Jazzfest, " In Defense of Sodom, " "'Every Year It's Something, '" and "Revising my Approach. The essays explore themes such as sibling bereavement, Latin American travel, the incomprehensibility of death, experiencing new cultures, online teaching, and hurricane evacuation.

Through partnerships and collaborations with universities, non-profits, local government, and private foundations, neighborhood associations and residents have been using Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) as a tool for neighborhood recovery in post-Katrina and Rita New Orleans. The landfall of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita along the Gulf Coast Region changed the way that Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are used for Emergency Management and Response, PPGIS, and community recovery. This research explores GIS and PPGIS best practices through an evaluation of New Orleans, LA case studies and seeks to present solutions for the development of a post-disaster PPGIS for community recovery.

A woman just getting settled in New Orleans with her fiancé is uprooted by Hurricane Katrina. She spends the two months after the hurricane in various parts of Louisiana trying to pick up the pieces of her uprooted reality. Along the way, she encounters ordinary people who act as inspirations and is also reminded of her deceased Chinese grandmother, whom she was care-giver to before she died and whose stories about life in China and the US parallel the woman´s own life during the post-Katrina months of vulnerability and change.

For nearly 200 years, there has been a neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana named Milneburg, which has been constantly reimagined by its inhabitants and others. From its inception as a port of entry in 1832 until the 2011, it has been called a world-class resort, the poor-man's Riviera, a seedy red-light district, a cradle of jazz, a village, a swath of suburbia and a neighborhood. It has been destroyed eight times due to storms, fires, and civic or governmental neglect. Each time its residents have rebuilt it. In its last iteration as a post-Katrina neighborhood, the residents reestablished the Milneburg Neighborhood Association in order to define its boundaries, gain control of its redevelopment and restrict who lived there as well as what activities were permitted. This is a case study of the trajectory of Milneburg and the cultural adaptations of its residents to keep it distinct, vital and respectable.

A hurricane is a combination of sustained winds, low atmospheric pressures and precipitation. Over the past decades, Louisiana has experienced several devastating hurricanes. The east bank of the City of New Orleans is bounded by Lake Pontchartrain to the North and the Mississippi River to the South. Lake Pontchartrain is a brackish system connected to the Gulf of Mexico through Lake Borgne to the East. As a Hurricane enters the Estuary from the Gulf of Mexico, it imposes a sustained surge of a few meters which may lead to flooding in areas which are not protected by levees. These flood water may be saline. Saltwater flooding is an environmental issue in flooded marshlands since saltwater can be fatal to some plants. The response of salinity and storm surge to hurricane duration which represents the forward speed of the storm is numerically modeled.

This research addresses a significant gap in previous work on the formation of urban and suburban black skateboarding subcultures. By using data generated through oral histories, photographs, mapping, and literature review, this study explores why black youth initially began skateboarding in New Orleans in the mid-2000s. In contrast to the scholarly literature and local popular perception, this visual anthropological study aims to provide an alternative origin story of black skateboarding in Post-Katrina New Orleans, and to examine the continuing popularity of the sport within the young black community.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall 60 miles east of New Orleans, Louisiana, on August 29, 2005. The storm revealed the reality of the socio-economic state of tens of thousands of African Americans living in the city of New Orleans, especially African-American women. This study examines the state of development of African-American women who lived in the Lower 9th Ward area of New Orleans prior to, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. This study was based on the premise that African-American women who lived in the Lower 9th Ward were significantly more affected by Hurricane Katrina than any other group in the area because of their race, class, gender, and state of development. A narrative analysis was chosen as the method for this study. The data were collected from interviews was analyzed to explore how Hurricane Katrina impacted these women’s state of development, or the lack thereof. The researcher found that Lower 9th Ward African-American women were impacted by Hurricane Katrina more than any other group because of their underdeveloped state. The conclusions drawn from the findings suggest that the African-American women from the Lower 9th Ward area lived a life comparable to that of women in developing countries, while living in a First World country. The reality of their underdeveloped state allowed for Hurricane Katrina to impact them more negatively than any other group by leaving them unable to regain normalcy in some areas of their lives, especially those areas influenced by their race, class, and gender.