Resilience Engineering has evolved during the recent century and could be a good complement to the prevailing ideas concerning safety within the air traffic industry. The concept of Resilience Engineering stresses the fact that in order to keep up the high standard of safety, there must be greater attention directed to the importance of being proactive, and to implement measures before dangerous situations arises. The purpose of our work was to develop the Resilience Analysis Grid (RAG) to help LFV, the leading Air Navigation Service Provider in Sweden, to identify their ability to deal with disturbances and unexpected events. By testing our RAG on seven active air traffic controllers and operational managers, we were able to produce a final set of assertions, with a total number of 22 items, which LFV (or other similar organisations) can use as a foundation for future RAG studies. As a first attempt we also rated the answers which gave us an opportunity to produce a star diagram, showing the relationship between the areas covered by the RAG. During the interviews we discovered that resilience is already today in many aspects a big part of the everyday work and that the RAG method can therefore be applicable in the industry with some modification. However, there are certain areas within LFV that we believe there is room for improvements. We believe that the RAG could serve as a helpful tool in identifying these areas as well as assisting LFV in their striving to remain one of the safest organisations in the world.

Resilience Engineering has evolved during the recent century and could be a good complement to the prevailing ideas concerning safety within the air traffic industry. The concept of Resilience Engineering stresses the fact that in order to keep up the high standard of safety, there must be greater attention directed to the importance of being proactive, and to implement measures before dangerous situations arises. The purpose of our work was to develop the Resilience Analysis Grid (RAG) to help LFV, the leading Air Navigation Service Provider in Sweden, to identify their ability to deal with disturbances and unexpected events. By testing our RAG on seven active air traffic controllers and operational managers, we were able to produce a final set of assertions, with a total number of 22 items, which LFV (or other similar organisations) can use as a foundation for future RAG studies. As a first attempt we also rated the answers which gave us an opportunity to produce a star diagram, showing the relationship between the areas covered by the RAG. During the interviews we discovered that resilience is already today in many aspects a big part of the everyday work and that the RAG method can therefore be applicable in the industry with some modification. However, there are certain areas within LFV that we believe there is room for improvements. We believe that the RAG could serve as a helpful tool in identifying these areas as well as assisting LFV in their striving to remain one of the safest organisations in the world.

No description available.

Supportive relationships with parents and peers are thought to be important in helping gay, lesbian, bisexual, or questioning youth cope with stressors related to their sexual identity. However, studies of same-sex attracted youth have yielded only minimal evidence for the link between social support and mental health. The lack of empirical findings may relate to inadequate measurement of the types of social support most relevant for same-sex attracted youth. Using matching theory as a theoretical framework, the present study examined same-sex attracted youth's perceptions of support for coping with problems specifically related to their sexuality. Ninety-eight same-sex attracted young people ages 18-21 were asked about support from family members, heterosexual friends, and sexual minority friends for dealing with problems related to, and not related to, their sexuality. Sexuality related life stressors, substance use severity, and symptoms of emotional distress were also assessed. A within-subject factorial ANOVA revealed differences between sexuality related support and non-sexuality related support across the three relationship types. From family members and heterosexual peers, participants perceived sexuality related support as less available than support for problems not related to sexuality. Non-heterosexual peers provided the highest levels of sexuality related support, and were seen as equally supportive across sexuality related and non-sexuality related domains. Linear regression analyses examined the roles of sexuality related and non-sexuality related support in predicting two mental health outcomes: emotional distress and substance use severity. Contrary to expectations, main effects for sexuality related support and non-sexuality related support did not predict emotional distress. Tests of "buffering" models revealed participants' overall perceptions of sexuality related support moderated the relationship between sexuality stress and psychological distress, such that higher levels of sexuality related support may have been protective. Perceptions of non-sexuality related support, on the other hand, did not moderate links between sexuality stress and emotional distress. Neither main effect nor buffering models were significant in predicting substance use severity. Results of this study provide important information about the types of social support most relevant to same-sex attracted youth.

No description available.

This study investigated factors associated with resilience in individuals with aphasia. Resilience is a phenomenon demonstrated when a healthy system of adaptation is present across several levels including individual or personal, family, community or society, in response to exposure to adversity such as communication impairment. Resilience was examined from the perspective of individuals who have experienced aphasia, and their families and caregivers. Sub-factors associated with successful outcomes for individuals with aphasia were identified through a qualitative approach using content analysis of personal interviews with persons who have experienced aphasia, their families, and caregivers. These sub-factors were grouped thematically to constitute the following major factors associated with the demonstration of resilience: support networks, person-first, and thinking positively. These factors represent the views of people with aphasia and their caregivers who participated in this study, and parallel factors associated with resilience that have been identified in previous research with related populations. / Speech Language Pathology

Resilience has been measured using qualitative and quantitative metrics in engineering,economics, psychology, business, ecology, among others. This dissertation proposes a resilience metric that explicitly incorporates the intensity of the disruptive event to provide a more accurate estimation of system resilience. A comparative analysis between the proposed metric and average performance resilience metrics for linear and nonlinear loss and recovery functions suggests that the new metric enables a more objective assessment of resilience for disruptions with different intensities. Moreover, the proposed metric is independent of a control time parameter. This provides a more consistent resilience estimation for a given system and when comparing different systems. The metric is evaluated in the study of community resilience during a pandemic influenza outbreak and the analysis of supply chain resilience. As a result, the model quantifies constant, increasing and decreasing resilience, enables a better understanding of system response capabilities in contrast with traditional average performance resilience metrics that always capture decreasing resilience levels when the disruptive events magnitude increases. In addition, resilience drivers are identified to enhance resilience against disruptive events. Once resilience drivers have been found, then a multi-objective resource allocation model is proposed to improve resilience levels. Previous resilience optimization models have been developed mainly based on a single resilience metric. The existing bi-objective models typically maximize resilience while the recovery cost is minimized. Although the single metric approach improves system resilience some of their limitations are that the solution is highly dependent on the selected resilience index and generally few optimal points are found. To overcome the rigidity of a unique metric a bi-objective model is proposed to maximize two key resilience dimensions, the absorptive and restorative capacities. This approach has the potential to offer multiple non-dominated solutions increasing decision makers alternatives where the single metric solutions are included.

Our world is more technologically advanced and interdependent, risks are increasingly shared across local, regional and national boundaries and we are more culturally diverse than ever before. As a result, communities are increasingly confronted with emergencies and crises which challenge their social and economic stability. To be resilient, communities rely on services and employment provided by organisations, to enable them to plan for, respond to, and recover from emergencies and crises. However organisational and community resilience are two sides of the same coin; if organisations are not prepared to respond to emergencies and crises, communities too are not prepared. Resilient organisations are also better poised to develop competitive advantage. However despite the potential business and performance rewards of becoming more resilient, organisations struggle to prioritise resilience and to allocate resources to resilience, which could be put to more immediate use. To enable organisations to invest in their resilience, the business case for resilience must be better than the case for new equipment or new staff. This thesis develops a methodology and survey tool for measuring and benchmarking organisational resilience. Previous qualitative case study research is reviewed and operationalised as a resilience measurement tool. The tool is tested on a random sample of Auckland organisations and factor analysis is used to further develop the instrument. The resilience benchmarking methodology is designed to guide organisations’ use of the resilience measurement tool and its incorporation into business-as-usual continuous improvement. Significant contributions of this thesis include a new model of organisational resilience, the resilience measurement tool, and the resilience benchmarking methodology. Together these outputs translate the concept of resilience for organisations and provide information on resilience strengths and weaknesses that enable them to proactively address their resilience and to develop a business case for resilience investment.

Community forestry as an approach to forest management has gained popularity in recent decades as a response to the failures of top-down, centralized forest policies. The shift from state-controlled forests to community forestry was aimed at achieving desired environmental and socio-economic outcomes in the forest management process. Community forestry is frequently posited as a promising forest management model for achieving ecological sustainability and community well-being. Although extensive literature exists that covers various aspects of community forestry, studies on the performance of community forestry programs in the face of unpredictable events such as climate change impacts and earthquakes are limited. In Nepal, for instance, community forestry programs have been implemented since the late 1970s and flourished after the adoption of the Forest Act of 1993. However, the impacts of these programs on the resilience of communities to various drivers of change have received little attention. To address these gaps, this dissertation employed a mixed methods approach in analyzing the impact of Nepal’s community forestry program on the general resilience of forest-dependent communities, as well as their specified resilience to the 2015 earthquake. Data for the qualitative component of the study were generated through the review of documents, as well as interviews with 27 purposively sampled key informants from two rural communities in the Gorkha district of Nepal, whereas quantitative data were generated through the administration of a survey questionnaire to 237 households who were selected using the systematic random sampling technique. Data were collected from November 2019 to March 2020.The results from the community level analysis revealed that the shift towards the community forestry program in both communities was triggered by the perception of ecological crises and facilitated by the existence of enabling policy conditions as well as the role of external forest organizations. The analysis of the impacts of the community forestry program on community resilience outcomes revealed variations across different forms of capital assets, with similarities and differences between the two communities. While natural capital, social capital, human capital were reported to have increased in both communities, the effect of community forestry on physical capital was found to be moderately positive. Regarding economic capital, the implementation of the community forestry program resulted in positive and negative outcomes on both communities, but the overall effect seemed to be moderately positive. Regarding specialized resilience outcomes, the community forestry program had a positive impact on community resilience to the 2015 earthquake. The community forestry program played various roles in community earthquake resilience, including enhanced access to timber for housing construction, and enhanced linking social capital for the mobilization of external resources. The results from the household level analysis showed that ethnicity and household’s prior involvement in forest organizations were significant predictors of household participation in the community forestry program but past household assets did not predict participation. Ethnicity and participation in the community forestry program were also the most important predictors of outcomes of the program, as measured by current levels of assets. Each of the past household assets and socio-demographic variables was a significant predictor of at least one of the current assets, but prior involvement in forest organizations did not predict any of the current assets or changes in assets. Regarding household resilience to the 2015 earthquake, household participation in the community forestry program also had a significant positive effect on two of the three dimensions of earthquake resilience, whereas past bridging capital and past physical capital each had a significant positive effect on the three earthquake resilience dimensions. Consistent with the community resilience framework, the results lend some support to the hypothesis that capital assets and institutions, coupled with the role of various community attributes, are important predictors of the process and outcomes of community resilience to drivers of change. Participation in community forestry programs provides an important mechanism for building general and specified resilience in forest-dependent communities. As global climate change policy has shifted towards community-based adaptation in recent decades, this study shows the potential for community forestry to serve as an entry point for global climate change policy through its contributions to community capacity for adaptation to various drivers of change.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). "June 2007." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-189). Also available via the World Wide Web.