Scholarship on disasters in the United States would suggest that emergency managers should play a role in hazard mitigation. Yet, little empirical research has investigated precisely what role or roles emergency managers actually do play during this phase. This study explored the role of county-level emergency managers in hazard mitigation and the factors that might influence those roles. Data for this study was collected through 42 in-depth, telephone interviews with county- level emergency managers in FEMA Regions III, V, and X, which includes the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest regions of the United States. Grounded theory was utilized in order to organize and analyze the data. The data suggests that emergency managers play several roles within mitigation: a generic role, a support role, an administrative role, a promoter role, a public educator role, and a planning role. These roles are explained by a number of factors, including conceptual confusion, response and preparedness orientation, financial resource factors, planning factors, additional resource factors, competition between mitigation and development, resistance to mitigation, and engagement in mitigation. It is also important to note that emergency managers spend only a small amount of their time in mitigation. The results of this study suggest that there is a gap between the theorized role and the actual role that emergency managers play within mitigation. Closing this gap will likely require additional resources for mitigation and county-level emergency management, as well as greater consistency in defining mitigation through policy and education.

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Abstract Urban/Rural Inequalities in Suicide Rates in Georgia, 2008-2013: A county-level analysis By Garrett Mahon December 9, 2016 Abstract: INTRODUCTION: Suicide is a significant public health issue. There have been copious amounts of research completed worldwide attempting to understand the reasons behind suicide, including those revolving around urban and rural disparities. However, research has yet to find a consensus on the issue. The state of Georgia, in particular, has a variety of county-level characteristics that could help understand the dissimilarity between urban/rural populations and direct future research to improve prevention strategies. OBJECTIVE: The present study aims to assess disparities in suicide rates across urban-rural populations, adjusting for rurality, ethnicity, and a county-level dissimilarity index, in the State of Georgia from 2008 to 2013. METHODS: Suicide mortality data by ethnicity, age, and county of residence were obtained from Georgia’s violent death incident report and death certificate database for 2008 to 2013. A series of Poisson Models were used to evaluate the rates of suicides between urban and rural populations. RESULTS: The analysis was conducted on 5833 suicides across the 159 counties of Georgia with Urban and Rural counties classified as both a binary and fourfold modify variable. There was sufficient evidence to suggest that rural counties in Georgia have a significantly high rate of suicide than those of its urban counterpart, (IRR=1.43, IRR=1.37), even after adjusting for ethnicity and a county level dissimilarity index. CONCLUSION: Georgia’s suicide rates are relatively higher among those living in rural counties when compared to urban settings. These results both confirm and conflict with findings from previous research. The diversity in findings denotes that future research should explore the variations across urban/rural classification systems, spatial remoteness of the area, and additional regional level characteristics.

Ukraine is currently in the throes of revolution. Will this popular uprising move Ukraine closer to the West and a democratic government or strengthen the country's ties to Putin and Russia? Viktor Yanukovich's second round victory in the 2004 presidential election was nullified by Ukraine's high court due to rampant electoral manipulation. Viktor Yushchenko, supported by hundreds of thousands of protesters in the 2004 Orange Revolution, became president and ushered in, what many hoped would be, a more democratic government. Infighting and competition among the Orange coalition soon rendered the Yushchenko government ineffective. Ukraine's progression towards democracy slowed and ties to Russia began to flourish once again when Yanukovich became Yushchenko's prime minister. In 2010, Yanukovich was elected president in another second round election against Yulia Tymoshenko that observers and academics deemed free and fair. Unfortunately, a new evaluation of both the 2004 and 2010 elections presents a much less encouraging view of Ukrainian politics. As shown in this paper, electoral manipulation was present in both the 2004 and 2010 elections. Additionally, both parties participated in manipulatory behavior in both elections. This finding challenges much of the academic literature to date on Ukrainian politics. In support of this finding of corruption by multiple candidates, a unique list experiment was administered to raion (county) level administrators in Ukraine. These administrators were asked about their views regarding electoral manipulation. The results of this experiment suggest that these administrators are still very influenced by and, arguably, willing to engage in electoral manipulation. The experiment shows that, at least at the raion level, Ukrainian governance has not become more democratic. Overall, the prognosis for democratization efforts in Ukraine is not good. / text

The present study expands the range of theoretical perspectives and empirical questions that have occupied the recent literature on homicide and suicide. The study examines county-level predictors for homicide and suicide in all sixty-seven counties in Florida. The current examination identifies which county-level variables are most closely related to each other, which variables explain the greatest amount of differences within the Florida counties, as well as which variables are most significantly correlated with the homicide and sucide rate by county. Additionally, the variables included in the present research are driven by the theorectical perspectives of social disorganization and anomie/strain theory. Using principal components regression the present study found that Income, Education, and Poverty, Infant Mortality, and Domestic Violence were predictors of homicide. Using the same components to explore the suicide rate, the research found that Age and Divorce were positively associated with suicide. In contrast to homicide, infant mortality rates were negatively associated with suicide rate in Florida counties.

The research conducted in this thesis consists of a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) based safety study and a spatial analysis of vehicle crashes in the State of Florida. The GIS safety study is comprised of a County and Roadway Level GIS analysis of multilane corridors. The spatial analysis investigated the use of county-level vehicle crash models, taking spatial effects into account. The GIS safety study examines the locations of high trends of severe crashes (includes incapacitating and fatal crashes) on multilane corridors in the State of Florida at two levels, county level and roadway level. The GIS tool, which is used frequently in traffic safety research, was utilized to visually display those locations. At the county level, several maps of crash trends were generated. It was found that counties with high population and large metropolitan areas tend to have more crash occurrences. It was also found that the most severe crashes occurred in counties with more urban than rural roads. The neighboring counties of Pasco, Pinellas and Hillsborough had high severe crash rate per mile. At the roadway level, seven counties were chosen for the analysis based on their high severe crash trends, metropolitan size and geographical location. Several GIS maps displaying the safety level of multilane corridors in the seven counties were generated. The GIS maps were based on a ranking methodology that was developed in research that evaluated the safety condition of road segments and signalized intersections separately. The GIS maps were supported by Excel tables which provided details on the most hazardous locations on the roadways. The results of the roadway level analysis found that the worst corridors were located in Pasco, Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties. Also, a sliding window approach was developed and performed on the ten most hazardous corridors of the seven counties. The results were graphs locating the most dangerous 0.5 miles on a corridor. For the spatial analysis of crashes, the exploratory Moran's I statistic test revealed that crash related spatial clustering existed at the county level. For crash modeling, a full Bayesian (FB) hierarchical model is proposed to account for the possible spatial correlation among crash occurrence of adjacent counties. The spatial correlation is realized by specifying a Conditional Auto-regressive prior to the residual term of the link function in standard Poisson regression. Two FB models were developed, one for total crashes and one for severe crashes. The variables used include traffic related factors and socio-economic factors. Counties with higher road congestion levels, higher densities of arterials and intersections, higher percentage of population in the 15-24 age group and higher income levels have increased crash risk. Road congestion and higher education levels, however, were negatively correlated with the risk of severe crashes. The analysis revealed that crash related spatial correlation existed among the counties. The FB models were found to fit the data better than traditional methods such as Negative Binomial and that is primarily due to the existence of spatial correlation. Overall, this study provides the Transportation Agencies with specific information on where improvements must be implemented to have better safety conditions on the roads of Florida. The study also proves that neighboring counties are more likely to have similar crash trends than the more distant ones.

The purpose of this study was to conduct an ecological examination of the relationship between social integration and dropout rates at the school and community level, and the role of career and technical education in this relationship. This paper also attempts to determine if this relationship changes depending on how urbanicity is operationalized. This study adds to the existing research concerning the ecological relationships between dropout rates, community social integration, school social integration, and urbanicity in Mississippi. Three-year averaged event dropout rates for 2005-2008, multiple community and school measures of social integration, and three different operationalizations of urbanicity were used. Some expected relationships were found to be true while others indicate that social integration at both the school and community level are so intertwined in their effects on dropout rates that no clear pattern emerges. The varying results related to the role of urbanicity in this study provide support for the need to further examine the concepts of community and location as factors that impact educational outcomes such as dropping out of school. This is particularly important when one considers that most educational policies that are implemented in a state tend to be overarching treating school districts no matter what size they are the same. This study also highlights that there are factors that impact what one would traditionally expect to find in the relationship between dropout rates and social integration that do not hold true. For example, an inverse relationship between dropout rates and local funding was expected, but in this study the relationship was found to be positive. One possible explanation for this is related to the fact that local taxes for schools are mandated by the county government and not voted on by the people. This changes the theoretical expectations of this relationship leading to possibly false assumptions.

This study adds to the existing research concerning ecological relationships between suicide rates, social integration, and urbanicity in the U.S. Age-sex-race adjusted five-year averaged suicide rates for 1993-1997 and various measures of urbanicity are used. Some proposed relationships held true, while others indicate that social integration and urbanicity are so intertwined in their effects on suicide that no clear, unidirectional pattern emerges. The religious affiliation measure captured unique variations in the role religion plays in this relationship; depending on how urbanicity was measured. Findings suggest closer attention needs to be paid to how both urbanicity and religious affiliation are measured. Overall, vast regional variation exists in suicide rates and the role of urbanization can be misunderstood if not properly specified.