The traditional role of the active-duty military force at home is one of support to a civilian Lead Federal Agency (LFA) that primarily falls under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). During emergencies, military domestic assistance is historically provided when local, state, and federal resources have been overwhelmed. During and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, however, the slow and perceived inept response to the massive disaster prompted a national debate on the appropriate role of the military in response to major domestic disasters. Many concerned with the federal response to Katrina believed that America's homeland security system could not aptly respond to a large-scale natural or man-made catastrophe without the military in a lead role. Defining the roles and understanding the responsibilities outlined for the Department of Defense (DOD) within the National Response Plan (NRP) is an important first step towards an effectively coordinated incident response. The purpose of this research is to explore the role of the active-duty military in domestic disaster response, using Hurricane Katrina, to determine if DOD and DHS response to the disaster was implemented according to the NRP. This research will help explain the role that the military plays in supporting the civilian LFA in disaster response.

After September 11, the emergence of global terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and dramatic changes in the security environment led once again to debate about the future of NATO. The U.S.â led Iraq War deepened the debate and created one of the gravest crises in the history of the Alliance. Although the Alliance experienced a difficult period, it managed to carry out its ongoing transformation efforts to meet the new challenges. At the Istanbul Summit of 2004, the first NATO meeting since the onset of the Iraq crisis, leaders of the Alliance acknowledged their commitment to meeting these new challenges. This thesis argues that the Iraq crisis was mainly a product of leadership failures and that a strategic divorce for the Alliance in the near future seems very unlikely. Within this context, the thesis also analyzes the nature of the Iraq crisis and the ties that bind NATO members on both sides of the Atlantic. Given the steps taken by NATO in its transformation, the changing security environment, and the United Statesâ and Europeâ s unique strategic cultures, the thesis concludes that, while maintaining its original collective defense commitment, NATO will now also perform a collective security function throughout a broader region, especially in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

CHDS State/Local / The author of this thesis asserts that the unique nature of the modern threat environment removes all justifiable options for the providers and users of threat information to operate at arm's length from one another. If the two communities are not integrated to the point that collaboration can proceed unhindered, the flow of information between them will likely be sluggish, unidirectional and largely irrelevant. Collaboration involves more than just the flow of new information, however. It requires the exchanging of ideas, the challenging of assumptions and biases, and leads to the formation of a networked environment that is needed to defeat our networked adversaries. An organization that fails to accomplish this level of integration and collaboration runs the risk of finding itself preparing for yesterday's attack, and failing to prevent, prepare for or adequately respond to tomorrow's threat. The 9/11 Commission's synthesized protocol for scenario development and intelligence tasking is presented as a means of fixing this problem. / Lead - Safeguards and Security Team, National Nuclear Security Administration, US Department of Energy

Natural and human-influenced disasters impact every demographic group around the world. People with disabilities face unique barriers to disaster preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery related to functional needs and societal barriers. This study examines the relationship between emergency management planners and disability communities, by exploring the intent of emergency management policy, implementation of the policy, and the experiences of people with disabilities in Jamaica and Virginia. In this study, 36 people with disabilities were interviewed about their experiences with disaster, and 18 planners were interviewed about the intent and implementation of disaster management plans. Participants were from different communities across Jamaica and Virginia, and included people with various disabilities as well as individuals in various planning roles from government employees to agency representatives involved in municipal, regional, and national level planning. In addition, the researcher analyzed the National Disaster Action Plan of Jamaica and the Comprehensive Preparedness Guide 101 of the United States. Findings indicate that in Jamaica and Virginia, strengths exist, including some instances of collaborative planning, a focus on subsidiarity to answer needs as close to home as possible, and an emphasis on flexibility. Challenges were also identified, instances when planning and response did not meet the needs experienced by persons with disabilities, and in which vulnerabilities were exposed. These challenges interfered with participants’ equal access to services afforded by the Americans with Disabilities Act in the United States and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Jamaica. Implications of these strengths and challenges for social work practice, education, and research are discussed in the context of this study, in the context of the principle of social and economic justice.

Catastrophic disaster represents a vital issue in emergency management for many countries in the European Union (EU) and around the world. Given the damage to human lives that different hazards represent, evacuation operations can be the only option available to emergency managers to mitigate the loss of life from catastrophic disaster. However, due to the amount of time needed to effectively evacuate a large area, the decision to evacuate must occur when there is a relatively low probability of the event. An explicit understanding of the evacuation decision can lead to better organisational preparedness in advance of catastrophic disaster events. This research represents work performed with 159 emergency experts and professionals across ten countries. The goal of this research was to create decision-making aids for evacuations in advance of a variety of catastrophic disaster scenarios. Traditional Decision Theory (DT) provides a rational approach to decision-making that emphasizes the optimization of subjective preferences combined with uncertainty. Within evacuation decision-making, DT and its respective outputs are appealing; however the analytical process can be difficult due to the lack of observed data to support quantitative assessments from catastrophic events and relative infrequency of evacuation operations. This research explored the traditional use of DT applied to catastrophic evacuation scenarios. Theoretical contributions to DT and emergency management include: 1) identification of evacuation decision criteria, 2) inter-model analysis between decision structures called Influence Diagrams (IDs), 3) complete application of quantitative decision analysis to support evacuation decision-making and 4) multi-criteria analysis for evacuation vulnerability using spatial data. Important contributions from this work include:1) An analysis of evacuation criteria for a variety of catastrophic disaster scenarios2) Inter-model analysis of evacuation scenarios (flooding, nuclear dispersion and terrorist attack) to identify common probabilistic structures to support multi-hazard strategy planning3) Quantitative decision models to support evacuation strategies, identify key uncertainties and policy analysis 4) Process to use spatial data to support multi-criteria evacuation vulnerability analysis 5) Organisational self-assessment for evacuation decision-making and spatial data use based on findings across all participating countries.

This Thesis presents ethnographic data collected through multi-sector, multi-level purposive sampling in a longitudinal qualitative case study between 2008 and 2010. A pilot study had discovered the changing role of government in building capacity for responses to civil emergencies, against a context of changing risks and resources for UK Emergency Management. The Thesis explored the increasing involvement of non-statutory agencies by focussing on the ‘Third Sector’: voluntary, charitable, faith, or community organisations and communities. The Thesis reports (1) the relationship between multi-organisational arrangements and resilience, (2) the role of Third Sector organisations in implementing resilience, and (3) the role of the Third Sector in community resilience. (1) The data suggested that the process of implementing resilience involved operationalising the resilience concept as a philosophy for Integrated Emergency Management [IEM], and consequent changes to the governance and organisation of Scottish and UK emergency management. The research linked the role of the Third Sector in resilience and community resilience to the dynamic between preparedness and response. It explored (2) the impact of implementing resilience on organising and organisations in the Third Sector, and (3) policy development and capacity-building for an emergent role in community resilience. The Thesis makes a distinctive contribution to the discipline of Public Management. Firstly, the findings represent a novel empirical and theoretical contribution regarding the role of the Third Sector in community resilience and in the resilience paradigm of emergency management. This data is used to extend existing theory about the proactive role of Third Sector organisations in collaborative emergency management. Secondly, the Thesis argues that the meso-level of analysis is neglected in the emerging field of resilience studies. Network and collaboration theory in Public Management are used to make a novel theoretical contribution, describing the relationship between multi-organisational arrangements and the operationalisation of ‘resilient’ emergency management. Thirdly, the Thesis contributes to the study of collaborative emergency management from this longitudinal perspective. This data is used to extend our understanding of (a) the applicability of Public Management theory to this context and (b) the relevance of data from this context to theories of collaborative public management.

Natural disasters such as flooding often affect vast areas and create infinite demands that need to be addressed in the same time. The wide scopes and severe impacts of such catastrophes often exceed, if not overwhelm, capacity of the national government to handle. In such a situation, communities such as cities and neighborhoods need to rely on their own capacity (resources, strategies, and expertise) to respond to disaster impacts at least until external assistance can be reached. Thus, studying how communities can be resilient to the impacts of natural disasters is important because this would enhance their ability to respond to the next disaster better. Within the context of great flooding in Thailand in 2011, this dissertation investigated the factors that generated or enhanced resilience of flood stricken-communities in Thailand. Nakhonswan City Municipality was selected as the research site. Qualitative research methods were employed in this study. Data were collected using in-depth interview and focus group. Thirty-six participants (28 for in-depth interview and 8 for focus group interview) from various organizations were recruited using snowball and purposive sampling strategies. Interview data from the field research were transcribed, translated from Thai language to English, and then analyzed using open coding and focused coding strategies. Analyses of in-depth interview data revealed eight conceptual themes representing factors that constituted resilience of Nakhonsawan City Municipality, as the leading organization responded to the flood. These factors are: availability of resources for resilience; managerial adaptability; crisis leadership; quality workforce; knowledge sharing and learning; organizational preparedness; organizational integration; and sectoral integration. In addition, findings from the focus group interview with members of three strong neighborhoods found eight factors that helped these neighborhoods respond effectively to the flood crisis. They included: self-reliance; cooperation; local wisdom; preparedness; internal support; external support; crisis adaptability; and pre-disaster social cohesion. This dissertation ended with the discussion of implications, limitations and suggestions for future research.

Chapter 1, "Emergency Preparedness: Rare Events and the Persistence of Uncertainty," develops a framework to understand how uncertainty might spike and persist after low-probability events occur. Unexpected events can have lasting effects on financial uncertainty, which in turn affects the real economy. This chapter uses a model in which the realizations of ex-ante unlikely events endogenously result in lower levels of private information. Lower levels of information propagate within the model, as uncertainty makes it harder for agents to acquire information about future periods, resulting in uncertainty persistence. This model of uncertainty is applied to an economy with a financial market. Uncertainty reduces asset demand and expected wealth, while increasing dispersion of beliefs. It also reduces investment and output, and results in higher credit spreads. Data on financial uncertainty, dispersion of beliefs, risk appetite, and credit spreads confirm the predictions of the model. Chapter 2, "Inattentive Valuation and Belief Polarization," uses a similar motivation to think about how two agents can disagree on the truth after seeing the same data. Based on the recent literature in inattention, we build a model allowing identical agents, shown the same set of signals from an objective state of the world, to permanently diverge in their posteriors. The inattentive framework allows for two effects: a confirmation and a confidence effect. The former states that agents who have a bias arrange their attention to perceive signals that agree with that bias. The latter states that agents pay less attention to any signal the more biased they are. These effects allow for permanent polarization of posteriors, even on issues with objective truth. Chapter 3, "The Real Consequences of Countercyclical Capital Controls," looks at the consequences of capital controls on investment and consumption in Brazil. Brazil is the most preeminent case of controls being imposed countercyclically. We find that capital controls have a significant negative impact on investment. The macro analysis uses a synthetic control method and finds that investment could have been approximately 20% higher if controls had not been put in place. The micro analysis uses a panel data approach and finds that the controls reduced the investment to assets ratio by as much as 40%, with some of its effects mitigated by the extension of subsidized credit by the government through the development bank. These results indicate that the renewed support for controls since the Great Financial Crisis should be more cautiously evaluated as it might harm the potential growth rate of Emerging Economies for a long-lasting period.

China is simply bigger and growing faster than any other country. The rapid growth of China during the past few decades has led to suggestions that China is exporting deflation, but many of studies of this idea have found no significant effect of China on trading countries' price levels, mainly due to the small share of China in world GDP. This study will look at China's impact not through trade shares, but by analysing the price effect directly. For actual competition, we use a model loosely related to the Bertrand model to find the Chinese price effect on Mexico's export prices in the US market. China's productivity has increased faster than any other country's and we assume that the increased productivity as the main exogenous driver of China's market expansion in the world market. The Chinese price effect is indeed statistically significant; after experimenting with various robustness tests, our regression results show that a 10% drop in Chinese price will cause Mexico to drop its price by around 4% to 8%. We also found that China can influence Mexico's price even if it has no direct exports to the USA; the mere threat of entry into the market is enough to constrain Mexico's exporters' pricing ambitions. We term this effect potential competition. The Chinese price effect for the set of potential products is present and is positive and statistically significant at around at 0.20 to 0.50. To compare the Chinese price effect in a relatively small market, we repeat the analysis on Singapore. We found that China influences Malaysia's prices in the Singapore market and the results are comparable to those in the USA. One of the necessary conditions for China exporting deflation is its competitive price effect on other manufacturing producers' prices; we tested for this and have found support for this condition.

Planning for incidents involving mass decontamination has focused almost exclusively on technical aspects of decontamination, with little attempt to understand public experiences and behaviour. This thesis aimed to examine relevant theory and research, in order to understand public behaviour during incidents involving mass decontamination, and to develop theoretically-derived recommendations for emergency responders. As these incidents involve groups, it was expected that social identity processes would play an important role in public responses. A review of small-scale incidents involving decontamination is presented, along with a review of decontamination guidance documents for emergency responders. This literature shows that responder communication strategies play an important role in public experiences and behaviour, but that the importance of communication is not reflected in guidance documents. Theories of mass emergency behaviour, in particular the social identity approach, are reviewed, in order to generate hypotheses and recommendations for the management of incidents involving mass decontamination. It is hypothesised that effective responder communication will increase public compliance and cooperation, and reduce anxiety, mediated by social identity variables (e.g. perceptions of responder legitimacy, identification with emergency responders and other members of public, and collective agency). The empirical research presented in this thesis tests the hypotheses and recommendations derived from the social identity approach. The research includes: a responder interview study; three studies of volunteer feedback from field exercises; a visualisation experiment; and a mass decontamination field experiment. Findings show that effective responder communication consistently results in increased willingness to comply with decontamination, and increased public cooperation; this relationship is mediated by social identity variables. Results support the hypotheses, and show that an understanding of the social identity approach facilitates the development of effective responder communication strategies for incidents involving mass decontamination. Four theoretically-derived, and evidence-based, recommendations for emergency responders are generated as a result of this thesis.