The challenge of resolving land use allocation and policy questions depends to a large degree on the conversion of data into information, and the effective integration of information into the decision process. Land evaluation is one of the fundamental means of generating information for land planning. Information products have however, been inconsistently and ineffectively used in the decision process. This thesis develops a decision centered approach to land evaluation as a response to this concern. Included in this development is a description of important theoretical concepts, as well as a practical demonstration of the use of decision support systems as a design approach. Initially, a conceptual model is introduced illustrating the technical and use components of information generation, as well as the adaptive design cycle. Various terms and techniques involved in the technical aspects of land evaluation are reviewed. Decision making concepts including decision structure, environment, analysis, and criteria are outlined. Three existing methods of land evaluation are then compared from a use or decision making perspective. Having completed a review of current approaches, Decision Support Systems are introduced as a logical progression towards a decision centered approach. Decision Support System design is demonstrated using a portion of the Central Fraser Valley Regional District as a case study area combined with an interactive microcomputer land planning tool (LANDPLAN). The demonstration emphasizes the advantages of the flexible, interactive capabilities of Decision Support Systems in aiding the decision process. Iterative design is also promoted with several needs identified if a more complete system is to be developed. In particular, data on strategic long term supply and demand factors is required, as well as continuous rating functions for assessing land performance. / Science, Faculty of / Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute for / Graduate

This dissertation investigates the financial health of municipalities in the United States, their margins of response to fiscal shocks, and their exposure and response to climate risk stemming from hurricanes. In Chapter 1, we construct a novel data set on the fiscal position of municipalities in the United States and document a secular decline in their financial health. Our data combines financial data from the Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports (ACFRs) of municipalities along with Census data of their revenue and expenditure cash flows. We find that a large share of municipalities operate with a negative net position---akin to a negative book equity position in the corporate context. We find that most of the decline originates from the accumulation of legacy obligations, i.e., pensions and other post-employment benefits (OPEBs); this is recognized by municipal bond markets through higher credit spreads. While accounting values from the ACFRs are informative, they are based on book valuations which potentially convey limited information about the economic value of assets and liabilities. Thus, we turn to the market valuation of local governments' equity by estimating an SDF that matches the valuation of a wide range of assets in the economy to prices future tax and expenditure claims. Using market prices for tax and expenditure claims, and market valuations of liability positions we find that the market values of equity are highly correlated with the book values. The negative equity position---in terms of book and market values---for some local governments suggests the presence of implicit insurance by the state and federal governments. The deteriorating fiscal position of municipalities across the United States raises questions about fiscal adjustment mechanisms municipalities have at their disposal and the general equilibrium effects of any adjustment taken. In Chapter 2, we utilize quasi-experimental variation in the year of property tax assessments in the state of Connecticut to provide causal evidence of the fiscal adjustment following a large decline in property values after the Great Financial Crisis. We find that local governments adjust tax rates to maintain stable tax revenues; there is no change in public employment levels and limited adjustments of public services. Our micro data on people's location further allows us to causally estimate the migration elasticity to a change in property tax rates. We find evidence of inter-state migration in response to an increase in property tax rates; and no statistically significant response of intra-state migration. Detailed property and location choice data reveal the elasticity of migration with regard to the property tax bill. An increase in the property tax bill by ten percent leads to an average increase in the migration propensity by about 1.5%. Finally, in Chapter 3, I investigate the investment component of local economic growth in municipalities after hurricanes. Using hand collected and web-scraped statutory property tax rate data in the U.S., I find that municipalities respond to hurricane impact by raising tax rates. I find the hike in tax rates is persistent for 3-4 years after hurricane impact. The response is four times larger for major hurricanes compared to minor hurricanes. However, the increase in tax rates is not expected to be large enough to cause significant out-migration after the average hurricane. I supplement these findings with a novel data set of firm facility-level hurricane impact. I find that firms initially decrease investment in the quarter following hurricane impact and increase it in the final quarters of the second year after impact. Taken together, this chapter presents a novel set of stylized facts on government and firm mitigation investment response to hurricane disasters. In particular, the precarious fiscal health of municipalities coupled with increasing costs of mitigating and managing climate risk poses serious questions about optimal policy in assisting local governments vulnerable to climate change.

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This dissertation examines how colonial histories converge with models for capitalist futures in Sierra Leone, framed by ongoing debates around the governance, accumulation and distribution of social goods. It explores how managerial logics of risk, human capital, resilience and corporate social responsibility informed the remaking of the state following a decade of civil war and military intervention. And it attends to the politics of reconstruction pursued in contexts of radical upheaval, examining material infrastructures and subjectivities as sites of transnationally mediated cultural transformation continuous with colonial memory and practice. An ethnographic and historical study based on 18 months of field and archival research in the Western Area (or Freetown Peninsula) of Sierra Leone, the dissertation contributes to debates around care, agency and social value, as well as the fraught relationship between knowledge and expertise in contexts of political, spatial and economic experimentation. Developing an approach that denaturalizes calamity and foregrounds long-term structural violence, chapters trace the growing cognizance of the relation between ecological risk and speculative practices in land and real estate markets in the country, briefly hailed as “Africa’s fastest growing economy” between 2012-2015. Examining the role of financial institutions, humanitarian agencies and contractors from the perspective of numerous stakeholders—including flood survivors and ex-combatants, builders and land brokers, urban planners and architects, World Bank officials and local conservationists—I demonstrate how reconstruction in Sierra Leone intensified dynamics of financialization under conditions of questionable sovereignty, reflecting entrenched hierarchies of rank within global labor and commodity markets and the long-term vulnerability of marginalized citizens to increasingly quotidian forms of harm. The dissertation argues for a methodological shift that understands official demands for citizens to embody their “resilience” as an enduring anticipation of catastrophe, one that has developed in tandem with normative aspirations for the “good life” in Sierra Leone. In contrast with the universal claims of liberal community, democratization and material renewal that accompanied the end of war, I track how manual work involved in excavating the foundations for residential sites in the new suburbs of Freetown coincided with a broader panic around the rising value, obscure origins, and growing scarcity of property, examining moral accounting around the relationship between prosperity and the uneven distribution of social injury. By situating ethnographic material on building, work and wealth alongside debates on global inequality, disaster capitalism, race and the poetics of history, I demonstrate the variety of social factors that sustain the violent futurity of growth. More pointedly, I argue that Sierra Leone reveals a shrinking zone of accountability for the human costs of development “by any means necessary,” as disasters increasingly reflect the retreat of the state in its capacity to protect or preserve human life. Ultimately, the dissertation underscores the contradictions of liberal governance in the wake of empire, new imperial relations in the face of old, and the seemingly premature claim of freedom therein.

The motivation to this master`s thesis is an increasing demand on evaluation of expertise report in conformity with requirements of internationally accepted standards as well as with national legal regulations. This master`s thesis is focused on defining of requirements of International Valuation Standards – IVS. The objective of the introductory study of this thesis is an effort to provide overview of the structure, the history and development of International Valuation Standards – IVS. The introductory study points out that the IVS standard is not stationary one, but shows the importance to keep the continuous track and analyze other possible information sources in connection to it. The main objective is to analyze the principal requirements of International Valuation Standards for expert as a person, expertise activity and required features of expertise report. The gained information is processed on the base of an expertise system approach, where the expertise is interpreted as a structured object with principal features: expertise object, expertise problem, expertise activity, expertise report and expert. Established findings are then analyzed regarding to such interpreted system approach of expertise and applied in the determination of type of approach which an expert should follow in the procedure of making out an expertise report of property valuation. Finally, an example expertise report for valuation of real estate is compiled. Such expertise report could be considered in conformity with national legal regulation as well as with requirements of International Valuation Standards – IVS. The expertise report is a practical example of findings of this master`s thesis.

Residential property not only provides in the basic needs of a person, but is also an indicator of an individual's wealth. The buying and selling of immovable property is complicated and the average person relies on the services of estate agents and banks. The research problem was formulated as follows: Property valuers and estate agents with access to the same information sources determine different market values for the same property. The research problem was researched by means of a literature study and empirical study. The methodology used by property valuers was described in the literature study. How estate agents determine the value of property was researched by means of an empirical study. From the literature study a model was proposed to determine the value of residential property. The information gathered in the empirical study was compared with this model to provide an answer to the research problem. OPSOMMING Residensiële eiendom voorsien nie net in een van die mees basiese behoeftes van 'n mens nie, maar is ook een van die grootste aanduiders van 'n individu se welvaart. Die koop en verkoop van onroerende eiendom is 'n ingewikkelde en die deursnee persoon maak daarom van eiendomsagente en banke gebruik. Die navorsingsprobleem is as volg geformuleer: Eiendomswaardeerders en eiendoms¬agente met toegang tot dieselfde inligtingsbronne bepaal verskillende waardes vir die¬selfde eiendom. Die navorsingsprobleem is deur middel van ʼn literatuurstudie en ʼn empiriese ondersoek nagevors. Die werksaamhede en metodologie wat eiendomswaardeerders gebruik, is aan die hand van die literatuurstudie beskryf. Hoe eiendomsagente te werk gaan om die waarde van eiendom te bepaal is deur middel van ʼn empiriese ondersoek nagevors. Uit die literatuurstudie is daar ʼn model voorgestel vir die bepaling van die waarde van residensiële eiendom. Die inligting wat met die empiriese ondersoek versamel is, is met die model vergelyk om antwoorde op die navorsingsprobleem te verskaf. / Public Administration / M. Tech. (Real Estate)

Residential property not only provides in the basic needs of a person, but is also an indicator of an individual's wealth. The buying and selling of immovable property is complicated and the average person relies on the services of estate agents and banks. The research problem was formulated as follows: Property valuers and estate agents with access to the same information sources determine different market values for the same property. The research problem was researched by means of a literature study and empirical study. The methodology used by property valuers was described in the literature study. How estate agents determine the value of property was researched by means of an empirical study. From the literature study a model was proposed to determine the value of residential property. The information gathered in the empirical study was compared with this model to provide an answer to the research problem. OPSOMMING Residensiële eiendom voorsien nie net in een van die mees basiese behoeftes van 'n mens nie, maar is ook een van die grootste aanduiders van 'n individu se welvaart. Die koop en verkoop van onroerende eiendom is 'n ingewikkelde en die deursnee persoon maak daarom van eiendomsagente en banke gebruik. Die navorsingsprobleem is as volg geformuleer: Eiendomswaardeerders en eiendoms¬agente met toegang tot dieselfde inligtingsbronne bepaal verskillende waardes vir die¬selfde eiendom. Die navorsingsprobleem is deur middel van ʼn literatuurstudie en ʼn empiriese ondersoek nagevors. Die werksaamhede en metodologie wat eiendomswaardeerders gebruik, is aan die hand van die literatuurstudie beskryf. Hoe eiendomsagente te werk gaan om die waarde van eiendom te bepaal is deur middel van ʼn empiriese ondersoek nagevors. Uit die literatuurstudie is daar ʼn model voorgestel vir die bepaling van die waarde van residensiële eiendom. Die inligting wat met die empiriese ondersoek versamel is, is met die model vergelyk om antwoorde op die navorsingsprobleem te verskaf. / Public Administration and Management / M. Tech. (Real Estate)