Dominant ‘society centred’ interpretations of social capital in Australia are inadequate to explain the economic fortunes and social prosperity of rural Australian communities. Given the continued contention over interpretations and measurement of social capital, this research sought to assess the relationship between different interpretations of social capital and rural communities’ resilience and prosperity. ¶ Utilising both quantitative and qualitative techniques to establish the relative levels of social capital in two communities of divergent growth, the primary objective was to test the association asserted between levels of social capital and prosperity and resilience in the rural Australian context. ¶ The research findings highlight three notable issues. Surveying social capital with current instruments is only effective in establishing the well being of rural communities which appears related to their resilience, not their ability to prosper. Secondly, the operational frameworks and responsibilities for social capital adopted by governments dictate the manner in, and degree to which they deem bridging and linking networks necessary and appropriate. This significantly affects the role social capital is perceived to play in communities. Lastly, while interpretations of social capital regard it as a normative factor in social life, rather than being comprised of different and dynamic elements affecting communities’ ability to prosper, the concept will remain unable to effectively contribute to the policy domain.

This master thesis analyses two citizen initiatives; the flood action plan of LLanddowror, Wales and the mount plan of the Overdiepse Polder, the Netherlands. It uses the collaboration theory, the ladder of citizen participation, cross-scale interaction and community resilience to explain the role of citizens in flood risk management. The aim of this research is to see how governments facilitate citizens and if culture and context influence the roles of governments and citizens. The Welsh system is bottom-up with an increasing role for market and civil society to take responsibilities. Citizens generally insure themselves against flood damage. The Welsh system has enhanced community engagement and creating awareness is important. Dealing with big strategic issues seems to be difficult. The Dutch flood governance is more top-down which means less room for citizen initiatives. Citizens are not insured for flood damage since the government profiles itself responsible for floods therefore awareness amongst citizens is low. The Dutch system has benefits when dealing with large scaled projects but has issues with creating awareness as well as engaging citizens in water development. Assumingly there are opportunities for both countries to learn from each others’ way of dealing with flood risk management and citizen engagement.

This dissertation presents a collection of manuscripts that describe development of models and model implementation to analyze impact of potential A(H7N9) pandemic influenza outbreak in the U.S. Though this virus is still only animal-to-human transmittable, it has potential to become human-to-human transmittable and trigger a pandemic. This work is motivated by the negative impact on human lives that this virus has already caused in China, and is intended to support public health officials in preparing to protect U.S. population from a potential outbreak of pandemic scale. An agent-based (AB) simulation model is used to replicate the social dynamics of the contacts between the infected and the susceptible individuals. The model updates at the end of each day the status of all individuals by estimating the infection probabilities. This considers the contact process and the contagiousness of the infected individuals given by the disease natural history of the virus. The model is implemented on sample outbreak scenarios in selected regions in the U.S. The sampling results are used to estimate disease burden for the whole U.S. The results are also used to examine the impact of various virus strengths as well as the efficacy of different intervention strategies in mitigating a pandemic burden. This dissertation, also characterizes the infection time during a A(H7N9) influenza pandemic. Continuous distributions including exponential, Weibull, and lognormal are considered as possible candidates to model the infection time. Based on the negative likelihood, lognormal distribution provides the best fit. Such characterization is important, as many critical questions about the pandemic impact can be answered from using the distribution. Finally, the dissertation focuses on assessing community preparedness to deal with pandemic outbreaks using resilience as a measure. Resilience considers the ability to recover quickly from a pandemic outbreak and is defined as a function of the percentage of healthy population at any time. The analysis, estimations, and metrics presented in this dissertation are new contributions to the literature and they offer helpful perspectives for the public health decision makers in preparing for a potential threat of A(H7N9) pandemic.

The purpose of this investigation is to see how economic inequality, stereotypes, and unemployment affect the well-being of people who identify as middle class in central West Virginia. Questions include whether living in a place with high poverty rates, regardless of income, negatively affects a person’s attitude and well-being, and if middle class people are victims of “guilt-by-association” for living in a lower income county. The results of this study may help organizations like the ARC include data on well-being and life satisfaction alongside their economic reports. Moreover, the public may begin to view West Virginia differently, fueling tourism and overall economic growth. Relevant scholarship for this project includes: The Road to Poverty (Billings, Blee), Stigma (Goffman), Glass House (Alexander), Those Who Work, Those Who Don’t (Sherman), Women, Power, and Dissent… (Anglin), Man’s Search for Meaning (Frankl), and The Human Quest for Meaning (Wong). I am conducting phenomenological interviews of twelve people in six distressed counties and also administering the Life Attitudes Scale to determine their level of well-being. I will then use an ethnomethodological approach to analyze the lived experiences of these West Virginians. Specifically, I wish to understand how they confront the forces of Othering and dehumanization imposed on them by both cultural outsiders and regional organizations. In doing so, this study may prove that the social reality and moral framework constructed by the people who live in this area is far closer to the truth than any kind of statistical analysis.

Emergency management coordination in the United States has fallen victim to over a century of strategies to organize, reorganize, consolidate, or decentralize disaster preparedness, planning and response. Regardless of the agency in charge at the federal level, individual citizens have been responsible for their own well-being immediately after any disaster or emergency event for more than 100 years because it takes time to mobilize and deliver aid. The system most often charged with managing that mobilization during an emergency event that exceeds the response capacity of local public safety agencies is the state emergency management network. Many entities in a state emergency management network have different responsibilities during disaster states vs. non-disaster states. Regardless of their role and function, entities need to be able to exchange resources and information with each other, often under time, economic, or other constraints during disasters. This resource exchange generates trust, an essential element of a resilient network. Resilient networks suffer fewer negative impacts from disaster related loss and are more likely to retain collective capacity to respond and help communities recover. The purpose of this study is to explore the ability of individual and state level attributes to explain variability in perception of network resilience. One-hundred fifty one state emergency management agency employees were surveyed regarding their perception of 5 constructs of network resilience (rapidity, redundancy, relationships, resourcefulness, and robustness) and individual level attributes. State level indicators from FEMA, NEMA, American Human Development Index, and Social Vulnerability Index were also analyzed. Overall, it was found that the individual attribute of perception of network integrity had the most influence on perception of network resilience, followed by perception of community resilience and state level attributes including disaster experience, state well-being, and number of full time state emergency management agency employees. These findings can improve network resilience by informing state emergency management network development activity. Networks that increase member opportunities to develop relationships of resource and information exchange will increase their resilience. That increased network resilience impacts community resilience because, as Winston Churchill's wise words during World War II reconstruction advise, "We shape our communities and then they shape us".

This study aims to apply a rural perspective in an area where the politics assume an urban norm. Considering the special circumstances in the rural areas of Sweden in terms of geographics and access to services it is substantial to map in what ways these areas differ from the urban life. Hence, this study constitutes a contribution to crisis management in Sweden by introducing the rural perspective and applying in what ways social capital plays a role in strengthening the community resilience. Previous studies have shown that the informal household preparedness is essential to the rural life and how knowledge and experience makes a difference in how different households prepare for crisis. The study is qualitative with an inductive approach and utilizes both an interview study based on semi structured interviews as the main empirical material, as well as a text study to provide supplementary empirical evidence to the conclusions. The informants that take part in the study provides three different practical perspectives along with further empirical material to broaden the conclusions.

This study examines the effects of place meanings and perceived individual preparedness on subjective household resilience and socio-psychological community resilience. Earlier research has shown an active controversy of whether place meanings and individual preparedness could transform into the perception of household resilience and community resilience. Thus, while place meanings, in a transformative norm, perform like place attachment and may support adaptation to change and strengthen the perception of resilience, it can present in forms of place dependence or inflexibility which might be a barrier for household and community resilience. Similarly, individual preparedness is claimed to be essential but insufficient to achieve community resilience to environmental threats. Results from a random sample household survey of 912 coastal Louisiana residents confirm the positive effect of individual preparedness on household and community resilience, especially the perceived ability to plan and adapt to environmental changes. Conversely, the higher level of risk awareness indicates a decreasing perception of household and community resilience, implying that investing in environmental threat-related information and strategies is vital for building a more resilient community.

This thesis explores the application of Green Growth strategies in Rwanda, focusing on community resilience and systemic leadership within the Green Village Model. The research addresses the gap in understanding how these strategies are adopted in the challenging socio-economic contexts of the Global South, with a specific examination of Rwanda's pioneering Green Village. Using a qualitative case study approach, this study involved interviews with key stakeholders including government officials, community members from the Green Gicumbi village, and experts in the mentioned theoretical frameworks.  Findings indicate that Rwanda's adoption of Green Growth strategies is contextually driven, reflecting the unique socio-economic and environmental challenges faced by the communities. Systemic leadership has emerged as crucial in fostering an environment that enhances community resilience, thereby supporting the successful implementation of Green Growth. This interconnectedness significantly bolsters the community's capacity to adopt green technologies, manage resources sustainably, and enhance socio-economic well-being. The study contributes to the theory of sustainable development by providing insights into the dynamics of Green Growth strategies in the Global South. It underscores the importance of aligning such strategies with local needs and conditions to ensure their effectiveness and sustainability. The thesis also offers practical recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders involved in crafting andadopting Green Growth strategies, suggesting that fostering leadership that appreciates systems interdependencies and community-driven initiatives can significantly enhance the resilience and sustainability of vulnerable communities.

We need to build less. As a soon-to-be architectural graduate, one could have hoped that the architectural discourse would have come to a more uplifting insight, but here we are, and the reason behind it is perhaps even more daunting, climate change. It seems increasingly apparent that building “green” may not be enough, we must build less. As if that was not prodigious enough, there is the paradoxical fact that, due to war and climate change, there is a growing population of displaced people, rising the demand for new housing and it is doing so at an everything ever-accelerating pace. As a final product, the thesis aims to question on how architects should navigate the demand for immediate shelter without sacrificing the preservation of a nation’s identity, delicately balancing urgency with the timeless essence of cultural heritage by proposing an architecture that is meant to last. A house that will stand the test of time in terms of external stresses caused by the climate, variations in the perception of aesthetic allure as well as the identity of the nation, city, and neighborhood.

Yes / Extant literature considers marketing activities as instrumental for post-war recovery and peace-building. However, war is an ongoing lived experience for numerous societies across the world. Focusing on the role of marketing during war, this paper presents a study examining how and why people living in war adversity deploy, perceive, and respond to war-related marketing activism actions (MAA). War-related MAA are acts through which brands/organizations and consumers create or draw upon marketing meanings to convey and to enact stances and experiences related to war. This study adopts a multimodal qualitative methodology integrating photo-elicitation and in-depth interviews with consumers and with marketing and management professionals in Ukraine, the country enduring invasion and war by Russia at the time of this paper publication. Analyses through a community resilience theoretical lens, generate a conceptualization that demonstrates how war-related MAA are harnessed and serve as a medium in community dialogues concerning envisaged resilience trajectories (survival, creativity and growth, and recovery). The paper advances understanding of marketing activism during war by illuminating its potential and boundary conditions for serving as a community resilience resource. It also offers public policy development directions for marketing practice, organizations, and governments.