Co-neighbouring is a design exploration that aims to examine the possibilities of resident’s engagement and collaboration in a rented apartment building in Sweden. In an apartment building for rent, where resident’s agency is limited to their private apartment, I invited my neighbors to become active designers of our closest environment together. This project uncovers the power relation visible between the landlord and tenants and some tensions that arise from this project’s will to give residents more agency. It also aims to highlight the importance of collaborative processes in apartment buildings and explores what kind of innovations become possible when residents get the chance to contribute to the development of the building they live in.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・論文博士 / 博士(地球環境学) / 乙第12901号 / 論地環博第11号 / 新制||地環||26(附属図書館) / 31655 / (主査)教授 渡邉 紹裕, 教授 宇佐美 誠, 准教授 小林 広英 / 学位規則第4条第2項該当 / Doctor of Global Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DFAM

Most disaster management studies only assess community resilience immediately following the event with no further follow-up. Accordingly, there is a lack of research being conducted to determine whether communities truly recover over time after a disaster strikes. Thus, the purpose of this research was to examine the different factors and dimensions that facilitate or hinder community resilience more than a decade post-disaster using present day Walkerton, Ontario (16 years after the effects of the 2000 water contamination outbreak). This exploratory study utilized an interpretive description qualitative methodology. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with a purposeful sample of 29 Walkerton community members. The data were transcribed verbatim and coded using conventional content analysis to identify themes inductively. Several barriers and enabling factors were identified in maintaining community resilience under non-crisis conditions in the community. A conceptual model was developed based on the study’s findings to demonstrate the application of the life course approach within an existing community resilience framework. This model contributes to the field of disaster management in demonstrating the various ways that a disaster affects the subsequent life course of individuals post-disaster. It highlights the need to integrate a community-centred approach in disaster management to yield more effective and efficient mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery strategies. / Thesis / Master of Public Health (MPH)

Despite shifts toward a more collaborative approach to emergency management, little scholarly attention has focused on the roles of local public organizations and nonprofits that do not have explicit emergency management missions in disaster response. Scholars and government officials call for identifying key local actors and developing a more collaborative emergency preparedness approaches prior to disaster situations. In practice, emergency officials seldom recognize post-disaster efforts of these local actors. Efforts to anticipate the potential decisions and actions of organizations that do not routinely deal with disasters necessitate a better understanding of how managers perceive their post-disaster related roles and what may account for such perceptions. Focusing on public libraries in the U.S., this study draws on information gathered through surveys and semi-structured interviews with library managers and directors operating in Hampton Roads, Virginia. To further investigate variations in willingness to engage in emergency response among local jurisdictions, the study explores context-related characteristics such as organizational arrangements and features of the policy environment in which library managers operate as well as factors related to individual managerial practices. The study finds that library officials' perceptions vary across libraries. Variations range from a more defensive approach to a more proactive approach. Efforts to account for the extent to which officials would be willing to engage in a more proactive approach should consider both the emergence of individual-managers' entrepreneurial spirit and their involvement in community-based disaster planning. / Ph. D. / This study examines how public managers in organizations that do not routinely deal with emergencies perceive the role of their organizations in responding to natural disasters and explores what may help explain such perceptions. Focusing on public libraries in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, I found that managers’ entrepreneurial spirit combined with their sense of recognition and inclusion in the local emergency preparedness network were associated with willingness to engage in a more proactive approach to disaster response.

Changing weather patterns have led to an increase in the frequency of tornadoes in the socially vulnerable southeast United States. This is concerning to manufactured and mobile homeowners, as these structures are highly vulnerable to tornado impacts. In recent years, the installation of ground anchors on manufactured and mobile homes (MMHs) has emerged as a strategy to mitigate against risks posed by tornadoes and high winds. Although these systems decrease horizontal movement and rollover potential in an MMH, they are not uniformly used throughout the region. This study uses protective motivation theory (PMT) to investigate perceptions of ground anchors among MMH owners. Specifically, this research identifies types of knowledge and experience salient in the context of anchoring and describes the factors that inform residents' threat and coping appraisals in weighing the decision to anchor their MMH. Results showed that participants' previous direct and indirect experience with wind hazard events, coupled with impacts from direct and indirect damage were most salient to anchoring decisions. The experience of psychological trauma from severe weather played a secondary contributing role. Furthermore, among the factors theorized to shape MMH owners' threat and coping appraisals, results showed that hazard severity, vulnerability, and anchoring response cost were most prominently discussed in considering whether to install an anchoring system. Findings from this study could improve the design of educational campaigns about tornado resilience and MMH anchoring.

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.

Nepal’s history is full of civil turbulence and the socio-economic development has been slow, however the last decade the social changes have been rapid. Some of the social changes include the profession of social work and peace initiative through inter-faith. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of social workers in peace-building in order to promote wellbeing and work-life in Nepal. This paper gives an insight into the life and relationship among the community members in Nepal, and an insight of how culture, religion, and history may impact people’s everyday-life. The data collection of this study was carried out through a field visit, with semi-structured interviews with twenty-five different key informants, during the period of February to May of 2018. The interviewees include grass-root to national level faith-leaders as well as social work academics. The result of this study indicates that there is a lack of trust among the community members, between government and its people, and government and its external influences, which effect community’s socio-economical standard. The findings also conclude that Nepali society lacks adequate and effective information-sharing, which seems to impact the community’s health and work-life. his study gives social workers an insight on how social bonds and trust among groups could be established, which could increase the well-being of the people in rural area of Nepal.

The thesis presents and inquires into a first person research story about the development of a ‘Community of Practice’ for asset-based rural development practitioners from across the UK and Republic of Ireland. It includes an account of how geographically remote members of the CoP were supported to come together over eighteen months to co-produce an online handbook called ‘Exploring Community Resilience’ (included as Appendix 1). Findings include: - Social networking and social media technologies can be powerful enablers of third and second person inquiry; - A compass tool (included here) can help hosts and curators make good design and facilitation choices as they host the emergence of complex, large scale social learning architectures (which this thesis calls ‘Digital Forests’); - Action researchers can benefit from developing skills as digital curators, producers of social media, and hosts of transformative learning processes; - Future generations of social media are likely to challenge the assumptions, methods and findings of this thesis. As we navigate our way into this fast changing future, it will be helpful to inquire into their impacts of new generations of digital technologies on our personal and collective psychological, cultural and social wellbeing.

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks exposed vulnerabilities to U.S. homeland security and defense, leading U.S. officials to analyze threats to domestic and international interests. Terrorist attacks against food and water supplies (agro-terrorism), were deemed a national security threat because of the assessed fear, economic instability, and social instability that could occur following a food shortage. Research indicated a comprehensive response plan does not exist across the federal, state, and local levels of government to mitigate the public's possible responses to a perceived threat to food security and food shortages following an agro-terrorist attack. This ethnographic case study analyzed the perceived threats to food security and the possible responses to food shortages in Yuma, Arizona (the 'winter lettuce capitol of the world'). Coleman and Putnam's theories of social capital served as the theoretical framework for this study. Data were collected through semistructured interviews of nine residents and six experts from Yuma's departments of government to examine the relative atmospherics between the citizens and government officials. Findings indicated that a comprehensive plan does not exist, and perceived fears and the lack of knowledge about emergency preparedness in a society with high social capital and community resilience can still create the conditions for chaos and anomie. Recommendations include improving communication, education, and expectation management of citizens. Implications for social change include improving public awareness and individual responsibility for preparedness, as well as assisting policymakers in maintaining social capital to deter social disorganization and anomie during disasters.

The concept of climate change has been in the debate, not only at the international level, but also locally, for decades. However, activists around the world have come together to raise their voices and address once and for all the environmental crisis that we are facing today. In that sense, the following research analysed the voices of activists, and their network, in South Africa. With the aim to understand the formation of community-based adaptive capacities in relation to climate change, in communities. This Thesis was conducted as a case study in Bloemfontein, South Africa. The study included five semi-structured interviews directed to activist from Bloemfontein, as well as, secondary data conformed by five interviews conducted to members of the eco-building project ‘Qala Pheland Tala. Start Living Green’, and story-telling videos. As well as, the employment of participant observation, as part of the methodology. The study looked at climate change adaptability and resilience in different communities, based on the resilience theory proposed by Carl Folke. And itaimed to understand the influence that the activists’ network is having incommunity-based adaptation strategies to climate change. Further, the results were categorized with the framework that suggests a Resilience Model, as a set of networked adaptive capacities, designed by Norris et al. (2007). The analysis of the results concluded that the link between the activists’network and the communities, has helped to build adaptive capacities and resilient societies. At the same time, it proved that we need new strategies of action towards climate change, that foresee regenerative societies.