This study was undertaken in order to obtain an understanding of how Namibia in general, and the education sector in particular, deal with flood emergencies. The goal of the National Policy for Disaster Risk Management in Namibia (2009) is “to contribute to the attainment of sustainable development in line with Namibia’s Vision 2030 through strengthening national capacities to significantly reduce disaster risk and built community resilience to disasters” (Republic of Namibia, 2009). This goal was the starting point for determining the extent to which the Ministry of Education complies with these national standards, and for gauging, in the light of responses to flood emergencies so far, the Ministry’s preparedness and response capacities, in line with international frameworks that Namibia has ratified. This qualitative study is situated within the theory of resilience, and sustainable resilience particularly. To obtain some of the information sought, a non-probability sampling method was used to ‘hand-pick’ subjects within the Ministry of Education to be interviewed at their respective locations, nationally and regionally. Five education officials who were intimately involved in past responses to flood emergencies were interviewed – three in Oshana and Ohangwena Regions, and two at Head Office in Windhoek – by means of a semi-structured interview. In addition, a literature review was conducted. The conclusions drawn from both the literature review and the information obtained from the respondents accord with the research problem identified: the Ministry of Education does not appear to be adequately prepared for, and does not assign the necessary priority to deal with, flood emergencies in particular. Possible recommendations for uptake within the Ministry of Education include: mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction at all decentralized levels; sensitizing all education officials, school community members and relevant stakeholders to policy frameworks and accountability structures to strengthen resilience within school communities; deeming costed contingency planning a priority, and hence strengthening links between decentralized regional structures; and continuously monitoring implementation of designed interventions.

[pt] A finalidade desta tese é propor estimadores pontuais para os coeficientes de escalonabilidade associados à Teoria de Resposta ao Item não Paramétrica (TRIN), a saber: Hij, Hi e H, e seus respectivos estimadores da variância, baseados na abordagem da amostragem de populações finitas. Com o objetivo de investigar empiricamente a qualidade destes estimadores são consideradas as populações de referência que são formadas pelos alunos que frequentavam o 9° ano do Ensino Fundamental, na rede pública, em áreas urbanas dos Estados de Roraima e do Rio de Janeiro, que participaram da Prova Brasil 2007. As respostas obtidas destes alunos a um conjunto de 10 itens dicotomizados que mensuram o capital econômico da sua família foram usadas na construção dos coeficientes de escalonabilidade do Modelo de Homogeneidade Monótona da TRIN. Repetidas amostras foram selecionadas de cada população de referência empregando dois planos amostrais: AC1S (amostragem por conglomerados em único estágio) e AC2-SAEB (com seleção de escolas e turmas, estratificação e sorteio das unidades do primeiro estágio com probabilidade proporcional a uma medida de tamanho da escola. A estimação pontual é baseada no Modelo de Superpopulação. Duas técnicas foram tratadas para a estimação da variância: método do Conglomerado Primário e Delete - 1 Jackknife. As medidas usuais: vício relativo, erro relativo médio, intervalo de confiança e efeito do plano amostral são usadas para a avaliação da qualidade dos estimadores em termos das propriedades de vício e precisão. O estudo assinala que os estimadores pontuais apresentam boas propriedades e, além disto, o estimador da variância corrigido pelo fator de correção de população finita é o mais apropriado em termos de vício e precisão. O plano amostral complexo adotado teve impacto na estimação pontual e da variância dos estimadores dos coeficientes de escalonabilidade. / [en] The purpose of this thesis is to propose estimators for the coefficients of scalability associated with Non Parametric Item Response Theory (NIRT), namely: Hij, Hi and H, and their variance estimators, based on the approach of sampling finite populations. To investigate empirically the quality of these estimators are considered the reference populations that are formed by students attending the 9th year of elementary school, in public, in urban areas of the states of Roraima and Rio de Janeiro, who participated Prova Brasil 2007. The responses of students to a set of 10 dichotomized items that measure the economic status of their families were used in the construction of the coefficients of scalability of the Homogeneity Model. Repeated samples were selected from each reference population using two sampling plans: AC1S (cluster sampling single stage) and AC2-SAEB (with selecting schools and classes, stratification and draw units of the first stage with probability proportional to a measure of school size). The point estimate is based on the approach of the Model Overpopulation. Two techniques were treated to estimate the variance: Ultimate Cluster method and Delete - 1 Jackknife. The usual measures: relative bias, mean relative error, confidence intervals and effect of the sampling plan is used to assess the quality of the estimators in terms of the properties of bias and accuracy. The study notes that the estimators have good properties and, in addition, the estimator of the variance corrected by the correction factor for finite population is the most appropriate in terms of accuracy and bias. The complex sampling (AC2-SAEB) impacted the point estimate and variance of the estimators of the coefficients of scalability.

Classical planning is the problem of nding a sequence of actions that take an agent from an initial state to a desired goal situation, assuming deter- ministic outcomes for actions and perfect information. Satis cing planning seeks to quickly nd low-cost solutions with no guarantees of optimality. The most e ective approach for satis cing planning has proved to be heuristic search using non-admissible heuristics. In this thesis, we introduce several such heuristics that are able to take into account costs on actions, and there- fore try to minimize the more general metric of cost, rather than length, of plans, and investigate their properties and performance. In addition, we show how the problem of planning with soft goals can be compiled into a classical planning problem with costs, a setting in which cost-sensitive heuristics such as those presented here are essential. / La plani caci on cl asica es el problema que consiste en hallar una secuencia de acciones que lleven a un agente desde un estado inicial a un objetivo, asum- iendo resultados determin sticos e informaci on completa. La plani caci on \satis cing" busca encontrar una soluci on de bajo coste, sin garant as de op- timalidad. La b usqueda heur stica guiada por heur sticas no admisibles es el enfoque que ha tenido mas exito. Esta tesis presenta varias heur sticas de ese g enero que consideran costes en las acciones, y por lo tanto encuentran soluciones que minimizan el coste, en lugar de la longitud del plan. Adem as, demostramos que el problema de plani caci on con \soft goals", u objetivos opcionales, se puede reducir a un problema de plani caci on clasica con costes en las acciones, escenario en el que heur sticas sensibles a costes, tal como las aqu presentadas, son esenciales.