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Research on risk perception, disaster preparedness, and hurricane risk communication among Hispanic/Latino individuals with disabilities is growing. However, there is limited understanding of how cultural factors influence risk perceptions, hurricane preparedness, and how emergency managers communicate hurricane risks to Hispanic/Latino individuals with developmental disabilities in Central Florida. This qualitative case study aims to fill this gap by exploring the cultural influence on risk perception and hurricane preparedness, as well as how local emergency managers communicate risks associated with hurricanes to Hispanic/Latino individuals with developmental disabilities. The study seeks to understand how culture can shape this population's risk perception and natural disaster preparedness for disasters like hurricanes. The researcher uses an integrative theoretical framework that combines the Cultural Theory of Risk, Protective Motivation Theory, and Familism to guide the study. In-depth individual and group interviews were conducted with a diverse sample of Hispanic/Latino families living with individuals with developmental disabilities. Interviewees were selected based on location, age, and cultural background. Additionally, the researcher conducted a desk review of hurricane communication from each Central Florida county, followed by individual interviews with the emergency managers from Central Florida counties. Data from Hispanic/Latino families living with individuals with developmental disabilities were analyzed using inductive and deductive methods to identify themes related to the effect of culture on risk perception and natural disaster preparedness, specifically for hurricanes. The study revealed that culture can influence risk perception and natural disaster preparedness among Hispanic/Latino individuals living with developmental disabilities in many ways. Moreover, data from the desk review and interviews with emergency managers indicated a preference for relying heavily on the social networks of Hispanic/Latino individuals with developmental disabilities to communicate hurricane risks. Keywords: Risk perception, cultural influence, developmental disabilities, hurricane preparedness, Hispanic/Latino, risk communication.

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𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧) Tropical forests are the world’s most structurally complex ecosystems, providing key functions like biomass accumulation and harboring biodiversity. Yet climate-change poses a potential threat to the stability of these forests – tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic are projected to increase in intensity, leading to higher forest damage rates, potentially reducing their carbon sequestration and biodiversity potential. Hurricane Maria in 2017 was a possible portent of this dynamic, causing widespread devastation in Puerto Rico. How do forests resist such severe disturbances? Forests ecosystems contain ecological memory – physical and biological legacies from past natural disturbances like fires and windstorms – that can increase their resilience to future disturbances. In fire-prone forests, for example, prior exposure to non-severe fires has been shown to increase resistance to severe wildfires. Does the same mechanism apply in cyclone-prone tropical forests? In this dissertation, I examine how chronic exposure to non-hurricane winds impacts hurricane damage at the tree, stand, and landscape scales in Puerto Rico. Specifically, I ask – 1) Do chronic winds alter tree architecture to reduce their risk of stem-breaks? 2) Do chronic winds reduce forest stand structural complexity? 3) Do chronic winds and lower canopy structural complexity reduce individual tree and forest stand damage from Hurricane Maria? 𝐌𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐝𝐬) I used a novel combination of remote sensing, fieldwork, and high-resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data collected in 2016 to address the above questions. In Chapter 1, I connected sub-meter resolution GPS data and 30 years of forest inventory with 0.03m resolution airborne LiDAR data to evaluate chronic wind impacts on the tree architecture and wind-risk of 124 forest trees of four key species. In Chapter 2, I used machine learning, remote-sensing and LiDAR data to predict the chronic wind impacts on the canopy height and structural complexity of ~20,000 0.28 ha forested sites across climatic, forest age and topographic gradients. In Chapter 3, I used pre-storm size and damage assessment field data for ~7,000 trees of 160 species across 14, 0.25 ha sites spanning an 800 m elevation gradient, alongside a remote-sensing dataset of ~12,000 forests to evaluate multiscale drivers – including canopy structural complexity – of individual, stand and landscape level hurricane damage. 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬) At the individual tree scale, I found that long-lived species grew ~3.5 m shorter and ~ 4 m2 smaller crowns on average due to chronic wind-exposure, substantially reducing their estimated wind-risk, whereas short-lived species did not respond architecturally to chronic winds. At the stand and landscape scales, I found that chronic winds reduced canopy height by 2.12 m on average, and that structural complexity decreased substantially with forest age. I found that stand-level hurricane damage was primarily a function of increased canopy structural complexity, which in turn decreased with elevation; and that individual tree damage increased with stem size and varied only slightly by species, with short-lived species much more susceptible to damage. My findings suggest that tropical forest resistance to increasingly severe hurricanes depends largely on the physical structure of their canopies, and only then on adapted species-level life-history traits. The physical structure of forest canopies, in turn, changes substantially with exposure to non-hurricane winds. In old-growth forests in Puerto Rico, there is therefore evidence that ecological memory driven by exposure to non-hurricane winds can protect forests from severe wind disturbances. However, younger, more structurally complex forests may be potentially increasingly more vulnerable in a changing climate.

This dissertation analyzes how local governments adapt to the fiscal stress of major disasters. Unifying theories of fiscal stress with emergency management theories, the dissertation presents a model of what influences local governments coping strategy use following disasters. Using new survey data and secondary financial data on cities, counties, and school districts that experienced Hurricane Harvey, findings show that local governments adapt in a variety of ways; of 137 local governments that responded, 66 percent used some number of coping strategies, with only 5 of 62 possible strategies not being used by any local governments. For those which did adapt, they on average used 7.06 strategies, and tended to show a preference towards revenue increasing strategies and rebuilding the community through new capital projects, with less emphasis on expenditure cuts compared to some prior literature findings on fiscal stress. The results indicate that local governments step up and provide new services necessary during the recovery process, to serve their community, despite fiscal stress. A negative binomial model shows partial support for the hypotheses that local governments with lower prior fiscal condition and greater hazard exposure will use more coping strategies. The findings show mixed results on whether institutional rules that restrict financial structures lead school districts to use more coping strategies than cities during the recovery process.

A collection of interconnected short stories set in diverse corners of Texas, converging on Galveston Island before and after Hurricane Ike.

Social media plays an important role during multiple phases of a disaster. While it is widely known that citizens turn to social media during disasters to gain information and send help requests, there is a significant gap in our knowledge of how, or if, first responders use social media to conduct disaster response operations. To help address this gap this study employed qualitative, semi-structured interviews with a sample of first responders (N = 20) who were deployed to Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The interviews sought to gain a better understanding of how social media was used to conduct response operations and identify both limitations and advantages of social media as perceived by first responders. Through a systematic coding process the analysis identified four themes related to social media usage among first responders to disasters: (1) more than just Twitter; (2) rumor has it; (3) one size does not fit all; and (4) timing is everything. The findings of this research highlight the importance of social media for both organizations and individuals involved in responding to disasters.

Vegetative health was measured both before and after Hurricane Harvey using remotely sensed vegetation indices on the coastal marshland surrounding Galveston Island's West Bay. Data were recorded on a monthly basis following the hurricane from September of 2005 until September of 2019 in order to document the vegetation response to this significant disturbance event. Both initial impact and recovery were found to be dependent on a variety of factors, including elevation zone, spatial proximity to the bay, the season during which recovery took place, as well as the amount of time since the hurricane. Slope was also tested as a potential variable using a LiDAR-derived slope raster, and while unable to significantly explain variations in vegetative health immediately following the hurricane, it was able to explain some degree of variability among spatially close data points. Among environmental factors, elevation zone appeared to be the most key in determining the degree of vegetation impact, suggesting that the different plant assemblages that make up different portions of the marsh react differently to the severe flooding that took place during Harvey.