The local livelihood systems of Tam Giang Lagoon, Central Vietnam have shifted since the policy changes of 1986. Aquaculture has replaced capture fishing as the most important livelihood activity in the lagoon. Aquaculture is governed by both customary and legal access rights. The move from a centrally-planned (collectivization) economy to a market-oriented economy in conjunction with the development of the aquaculture sector has had significant impacts. This change has reduced the available lagoon areas for mobile-gear fishers, polarized different user-groups, and raised the issue of resource access inequity. The overarching objective of this thesis is to understand the complexity and influence of property rights on local livelihood systems; specifically: (1) to examine changes in resource access and various types of resource use in the lagoon; (2) to analyse the effects of aquaculture and changes in resource access on local livelihood systems; and (3) to assess the resilience of livelihood systems and identify the essential elements that contribute to resilience in livelihood systems. Qualitative and quantitative research methods were used for data collection. Sixty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted and fourteen households were selected for an additional in-depth livelihood analysis. Focus group discussions were one of the most important methods used for data collection. Fifteen formal focus groups and several informal discussions were organized. Both types of focus groups were used in conjunction with a number of participatory methods, such as seasonal calendar, participatory mapping, and well-being ranking. The field work was conducted over twenty-nine months between December, 2005 and April, 2008. The research examined the evolution of property rights and the complexity of resource access in Thuy Dien village. The research investigated seven types of resource use which are associated with “bundles of rights” and discussed the dynamics of property rights governed by both laws and customs. De jure and de facto rights were classified in different time periods by using Schlager and Ostrom’s framework. By applying a sustainable livelihood framework, the research presented overview of livelihood systems and discussed the influence of property rights on household livelihoods. Households in the village were classified into four groups: (1) earth pond, (2) net-enclosure; (3) mobile fishing; and (4) non-fishing households. Attention was paid to the disparity between these household types in term of livelihood strategies and opportunities for livelihood development. The research applied a resilience approach to the analysis of the local livelihood systems. Resilience is an inherent attribute of sustainable livelihood systems because it implies the flexibility and availability of options. If resilience is lost, livelihood systems may cross a threshold and shift to a different regime or alternative equilibrium. In Tam Giang Lagoon, a shift to a different regime seemed to have occurred over the last two decades.

Although activists’ conservative estimate of the number of non-status people living in Canada is well over 500,000, the Canadian government, through its exclusionary immigration, civic, and public policies, has criminalized their existence and forsaken its responsibility for their human rights. It has been abetted by international law, which largely leaves it to individual states to resolve their own issues with unregulated migration by means of deportation or regularization. This anti-racist feminist research relied on multiple methods to collect 155 survey questionnaires distributed by service providers to non-status women within the Greater Toronto Area; it also relied on thirteen individual and two focus-group interviews with service providers and activists in order to: (1) explore the lived conditions of non-status women, and (2) examine how the activities of service providers and activists address these women’s needs. The results show that living without legal immigration status has dire consequences for non-status women, placing them at high risk of physical and sexual abuse, labour exploitation, sexual and mental health challenges, excessive caring responsibilities, and unstable housing conditions. Since most publicly funded human-service agencies come under governmental control through the process of funding allocation, practitioners must meet their non-status clients’ needs in an underground manner or on compassionate grounds, while facing dual workloads, limited referral sources, and work-related burnout. This adversely affects the quality of the care these women receive. As a result, in recent years, many frontline practitioners and human-rights activists have formed campaigns and networks to confront neoliberal state policies and act as the voice of non-status women. At the same time, non-status women’s resilient power, informal learning mechanisms, and social networks have enabled them to learn new skills, navigate the system, and make Canada their new home.

In the area of process safety, many efforts have focused on studying methods to prevent the transition of the state of the system from a normal state to an upset and/or catastrophic state, but many unexpected changes are unavoidable, and even under good risk management incidents still occur. The aim of this work is to propose the principles and factors that contribute to the resilience of the chemical process, and to develop a systematic approach to evaluate the resilience of chemical processes in design aspects. Based on the analysis of transition of the system states, the top-level factors that contribute to Resilience were developed, including Design, Detection Potential, Emergency Response Planning, Human, and Safety Management. The evaluation framework to identify the Resilience Design Index is developed by means of the multifactor model approach. The research was then focused on developing complete subfactors of the top-level Design factor. The sub-factors include Inherent Safety, Flexibility, and Controllability. The proposed framework to calculate the Inherent Safety index takes into account all the aspects of process safety design via many sub-indices. Indices of Flexibility and Controllability sub-factors were developed from implementations of well-known methodologies in process design and process control, respectively. Then, the top-level Design index was evaluated by combining the indices of the sub-factors with weight factors, which were derived from Analytical Hierarchical Process approach. A case study to compare the resilience levels of two ethylene production designs demonstrated the proposed approaches and gave insights on process resilience of the designs.

Encountering institutionalized forms of racism during high school in Saskatchewan, immigrant Black African female students experiences in dealing with assimilatory and hegemonic in kind learning environment have not been well understood or even explored. Having moved from Ghana as a young learner, this researcher discloses the processes of being silenced in classrooms incent on Euro-Canadian learning and the indifference to unique cultural contributions that “othered” learners could offer. Addressing the lack of acknowledgment, this researcher sought to find five kindred female learners to explore how each relied on her resilience to develop social resistance to hegemonic practices. While informed by regular treatise of individual interviews, this researcher employed Seidman’s (2006) interview method, Deka Wɔ Wɔ focus group discussion and Riessman’s (1987) core narrative research analysis. Furthermore, while grounding the research in antiracism theory and Black feminist thought, this researcher offers collective analysis that arrived at cultural foundation that spoke to strength and aspiration. Sankofa is an Akan culturally valued notion that allows individuals to take on cultural identity to take on responsibility to understand one’s past. The latter allowed the knowledge keepers to identify strength, and insights to resist the assimilatory measures while learning in largely Euro-Canadian context. Ultimately, this thesis used a strength based approach in exploring the students’ experiences, and introduces Sankofa as a theoretical concept that evokes resilience and social resistance. Such findings may well be one of the first ones in Canadian educational context. This researcher believes that discovery and unfolding strategies in developing resilience and social resistance are essential in diversifying the learning environment in Saskatchewan and elsewhere beyond the much favoured Euro-Canadian context.

This thesis employs a case study approach to investigate local implications of globally restricted mobility by examining Queenstown’s vulnerability to peak oil and climate change. Qualitative research methods are the principal means of inquiry. The research findings suggest that Queenstown is particularly vulnerable to peak oil and climate change at a broad scale because of its dependence on tourism and heavy reliance on air transport. However, Queenstown has fortuitously built up resilience to peak oil and climate change through tourism industry diversity, comparative advantage and an increasing proportion of short-haul visitors. A selection of key Queenstown tourism stakeholders interviewed as part of the research demonstrated some grasp of peak oil and climate change issues but lacked in-depth understanding. They generally considered the issues as being beyond their control although several suggested ways that Queenstown could strengthen resilience to peak oil and climate change. In terms of solutions, this research identifies three potential strategies. The first involves investing in a low carbon local transport system to increase destination level resilience to peak oil and climate change and enhance the uniqueness of the Queenstown brand. The second involves Queenstown promoters targeting the high-end niche tourism market in order to create a more resilient visitor profile. And the third involves the creation of new and expansion of existing industries not tied to tourism – preferably industries that are not excessively oil dependent and carbon intensive. But in order to successfully tackle the problem, it is imperative to first raise awareness. The research recommends implementing a framework that ensures an inclusive community-wide open dialogue process as the most effective way to achieve this.

Following a disaster, an organisation’s ability to recover is influenced by its internal capacities, but also by the people, organisations, and places to which it is connected. Current approaches to organisational resilience tend to focus predominantly on an organization's internal capacities and do not adequately consider the place-based contexts and networks in which it is embedded. This thesis explores how organisations’ connections may both hinder and enable organisational resilience. Organisations in the Canterbury region of New Zealand experienced significant and repeated disruptions as a result of two major earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks throughout 2010 and 2011. This thesis draws upon 32 case studies of organisations located in three severely damaged town centres in Canterbury to assess the influence that organisations’ place-based connections and relational networks had on their post-earthquake trajectories. The research has four objectives: 1) to examine the ways organisations connected to their local contexts both before and after the earthquakes, 2) to explore the characteristics of the formal and informal networks organisations used to aid their response and recovery, 3) to identify the ways organisations’ connections to their local contexts and support networks influenced their ability to recover following the earthquakes, and finally, 4) to develop approaches to assess resilience that consider these extra-organisational connections. The thesis contests the fiction that organisations recover and adapt independently from their contexts following disasters. Although organisations have a set of internal capacities that enable their post-disaster recovery, they are embedded within external structures that constrain and enable their adaptive options following a disaster. An approach which considers organisations’ contexts and networks as potential sources of organisational resilience has both conceptual and practical value. Refining our understanding of the influence of extra-organisational connections can improve our ability to explain variability in organisational outcomes following disasters and foster new ways to develop and manage organisational resilience.

This thesis explores how Māori whānau cope under the circumstance of multiple job holding in four whānau who have at least one member who is a multiple job holder. The study uses a behavioural model of family resilience to identify the factors that enable or inhibit whānau coping. It finds that the reasons that influence Māori whānau multiple job holding can shape the whānau ability to cope while multiple job holding. The whānau in this study were found to have multiple motives for multiple job holding. Multiple job holding was used as a buffer mechanism because of previous financial stresses and strains, to facilitate future career and employment development and to enable a parent to fulfil what they perceived to be parental-financial obligations. In one case a demand for Māori skilled professional workers, led a whānau member to take on an extra job to fill this demand. Of importance, the study finds that resources are an essential factor when considering how whānau cope. Coping is facilitated by access to multiple resources and the types of resources required by whānau will be contextually specific in each whānau case.

Resilience is among the increasingly popular topics of interest in the literature. Although rooted in the developmental and clinical literature, there has been an expansion of conceptualisations for this construct from various research streams, including the occupational literature. However, due to the lack of a behaviour-oriented measure of employee-centric resilience, the conceptualisation adapted in the present study refers to employee resilience as developable capacities that can be facilitated by the organisation to positively cope, adapt and thrive in response to continuously changing work environments. Using a recently developed measure of resilience, this study investigated the effects of the two leadership behaviours of empowerment and contingent reward, as well as the moderating roles of dispositional proactivity and optimism as individual differences. Regression analysis on a sample of 369 professionals supported the hypotheses that employee resilience is contingent on the leader’s operational empowerment and on contingent reward behaviours. Results also confirmed the effect of proactivity and optimism in enhancing resilience, and the moderating role of proactive personality in enhancing relation between empowering leadership and follower’s resilience. Outcomes of the study were also discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications, and recommendations were made for future research into the topic.

Unsupervised learning has become more and more important due to the recent explosion of data. Clustering, a key topic in unsupervised learning, is a well-studied task arising in many applications ranging from computer vision to computational biology to the social sciences. This thesis is a collection of work exploring two modern aspects of clustering: stability and scalability. In the first part, we study clustering under a stability property called perturbation resilience. As an alternative approach to worst case analysis, this novel theoretical framework aims at understanding the complexity of clustering instances that satisfy natural stability assumptions. In particular, we show how to correctly cluster instances whose optimal solutions are resilient to small multiplicative perturbations on the distances between data points, significantly improving existing guarantees. We further propose a generalized property that allows small changes in the optimal solutions after perturbations, and provide the first known positive results in this more challenging setting. In the second part, we study the problem of clustering large scale data distributed across nodes which communicate over the edges of a connected graph. We provide algorithms with small communication cost and provable guarantees on the clustering quality. We also propose algorithms for distributed principal component analysis, which can be used to reduce the communication cost of clustering high dimensional data while merely comprising the clustering quality. In the third part, we study community detection, the modern extension of clustering to network data. We propose a theoretical model of communities that are stable in the presence of noisy nodes in the network, and design an algorithm that provably detects all such communities. We also provide a local algorithm for large scale networks, whose running time depends on the sizes of the output communities but not that of the entire network.

Opportunistic networks are constructed by devices carried by people and vehicles. The devices use short range radio to communicate. Since the network is mobile and often sparse in terms of node contacts, nodes store messages in their buffers, carrying them, and forwarding them upon node encounters. This form of communication leads to a set of challenging issues that we investigate: congestion, transfer ordering, and resilience. Congestion occurs in opportunistic networks when a node's buffers becomes full. To be able to receive new messages, old messages have to be evicted. We show that buffer eviction strategies based on replication statistics perform better than strategies that evict messages based on the content of the message. We show that transfer ordering has a significant impact on the dissemination of messages during time limited contacts. We find that transfer strategies satisfying global requests yield a higher delivery ratio but a longer delay for the most requested data compared to satisfying the neighboring node's requests. Finally, we assess the resilience of opportunistic networks by simulating different types of attacks. Instead of enumerating all possible attack combinations, which would lead to exhaustive evaluations, we introduce a method that use heuristics to approximate the extreme outcomes an attack can have. The method yields a lower and upper bound for the evaluated metric over the different realizations of the attack. We show that some types of attacks are harder to predict the outcome of and other attacks may vary in the impact of the attack due to the properties of the attack, the forwarding protocol, and the mobility pattern. / WISENET