This study utilized content analysis of newspaper articles in the month following Hurricane Ike's landfall to evaluate the presence of agenda setting and framing. Three national newspapers were analyzed to determine the existence and order of news frames. The results indicate that Semetko and Valkenburg's (2000) news frames changed in order of importance in this study. The order of news frames varied among the three national newspapers. The newspaper with mostly human interest frames was determined to be more sensational than the other two, more serious newspapers with predominantly responsibility frames. This study then compared the five ordered frames to previous framing research on Hurricane Katrina. The two hurricanes differed greatly in amount of news coverage and varied slightly in the order of the news frames. An evaluation of news coverage of major U.S. events occurring in the month after Hurricane Ike was conducted, with results indicating that news attention of the hurricane was hindered by other major national events.

Hurricanes cause enormous loss to life and property worldwide. Predicting the damage caused by hurricane and figuring out what factors are responsible for the damage are important. This study utilizes multiple linear regression models to predict a hurricane – induced Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) payout or TWIA payout ratio using independent variables that could affect the hurricane intensity, including distance from the coastline, distance from the hurricane track, distance from the landfall center of Hurricane Ike, proportion in floodplain zone (100 year, 500 year, 100-500 year), building area, proportion in island, number of buildings per parcel, and building age. The methodology of this study includes Pearson’s correlation and multiple linear regressions. First, Pearson’s correlation is used to examine whether there are any significant correlations between the dependent and independent variables. For TWIA payout, three independent variables, distance from the coastline, distance from the landfall center, and building area, are correlated to the TWIA payout at the 0.01 level. Distance from the coastline and distance from the landfall center have negative relations with the TWIA payout. The variable, building area, has a positive relation with the TWIA payout. Moreover, the improvement value is correlated to the TWIA payout at the 0.05 level. For TWIA payout ratio, distance from the coastline is correlated to the TWIA payout ratio at the level of 0.01 and distance from the landfall center is correlated to the TWIA payout ratio at the 0.05 level. These two variables have negative relations to the TWIA payout ratio. Multiple linear regressions are applied to predict the TWIA payout and payout ratio. A regression model with an Adjusted R Square of 0.264 is presented to predict the TWIA payout. This model could explain 26.4 percent of the variability in TWIA payout using the variables, distance from coastline and building area. A regression model with an Adjusted R Square of 0.121 is presented to predict the TWIA payout ratio.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2002. / Advisers: Mariko Inoue; Hsingyuan Tsao. Includes bibliographical references.

Coastal marshes and wetlands are vital natural resources that offer habitats for plants and animals, serve as ecological filtration for soil and water pollutants, and act as protection for coastlines. Fishing, both commercial and sport, has a large economic impact in the study area – the Gulf Coast between Galveston Bay, TX and Oak Grove, LA. The objective of this research was to determine the contribution of Hurricane Ike storm surge sedimentation to long-term marsh aggradation in Texas and Louisiana coastal marshes. The research hypothesized that Hurricane Ike’s storm surge deposit would be equal to decades and possibly even a century’s worth of the average annual non-storm sedimentation. A quantitative field study was performed. The storm surge deposit was examined in a series of 15 transects covering approximately 180 km east of Hurricane Ike’s landfall. Nine of the 15 transects were re-surveyed a year after the initial measurement to assess preservation of the deposit. The results demonstrate that Hurricane Ike contributed between 10 to 135 years’ worth of sediment to coastal marshes along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, and the sediment deposits have been preserved for over two years.

Recurring extreme events of nature challenge disaster-prone settlements in complex ways. Devastating property damages are one of the tests of survival for such settlements in both economic and social terms. It also provides unique opportunities to rethink the environment cleared by massive natural disasters. However, rebuilding for long-term resiliency is one of the least investigated areas, particularly when employing tacit knowledge in the sustainable recovery process. This study examines the post-disaster rebuilding process in spatial terms for Bolivar Peninsula in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. It further investigates the nexus between connectivity among open space networks to various levels of surge damage among Bolivar spontaneous settlements. The study uses syntactical methods to measure axial connectivity of the Bolivar Peninsula access grid and one-way Analysis of Variance to interpret the way connectivity varies along the no damage to destroyed damage scale. In addition, the permeability rubric analyzes the elevation characteristics of houses that demonstrated higher probabilities of survival through a logistic regression. The conclusions are based on two basic premises. Local knowledge demands an indefinite time to be adapted and mobilized because of the increasing intensity of natural disasters. In addition, the high frequency of disaster events significantly challenges the versatility of local coping and survival strategies. The results reveal that the connectivity of the access grid has an inversely proportional relationship with various damage levels, particularly for no damage and destroyed. Furthermore, out of a number of resiliency characteristics listed in the literature, only ground elevation and ground enclosure demonstrated probability significances for survival. Potentially, the results of this research could support three significant outcomes pertaining to sustainable disaster recovery: preserving place character, social justice among affected groups, and promoting rapid recovery.

Operating System fingerprinting is a reconnaissance method used by Whitehats and Blackhats alike. Current techniques for fingerprinting do not take into account tunneling protocols, such as IPSec, SSL/TLS, and SSH, which effectively `wrap` network traffic in a ciphertext mantle, thus potentially rendering passive monitoring ineffectual. Whether encryption makes VPN tunnel endpoints immune to fingerprinting, or yields the encrypted contents of the VPN tunnel entirely indistinguishable, is a topic that has received modest coverage in academic literature. This study addresses these question by targeting two tunnelling protocols: IPSec and SSL/TLS. A new fingerprinting methodology is presented, several fingerprinting discriminants are identified, and test results are set forth, showing that endpoint identities can be uncovered, and that some of the contents of encrypted VPN tunnels can in fact be discerned. / Dissertation (MSc (Computer Science))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Computer Science / unrestricted

The main goal of this thesis is to articulate and to prove security properties of the key exchange protocol IKE, through which the IPSec protocol establishes agreement on keys used for securing internet traffic. It also covers the description of differences between asymptotic and concrete security treatments and the notions of key exchange security and the security of underlying primitives used by key exchange protocols, in the context of concrete security. A general description of IPSec and its main functionalities follows, accompanied by detailed descriptions of both versions of IKE (IKEv1, IKEv2). A general introduction to key exchange is also included and a representative of signature-based version of IKE is introduced and its security is analysed. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The storm surge from Hurricane Ike inundated Bolivar Peninsula as well as pooled up (~4 meters above sea level) in the Galveston Bay System behind Bolivar. After the hurricane passed, this water flowed back over the peninsula for about 19 hours, causing a great deal of coastal destruction. Analysis of post-Hurricane Ike aerial photography and Lidar data revealed the development of dramatically different scour and backflow features in the beach and dune environments along Bolivar Peninsula, Texas. Using Ward's cluster analysis, the 454 identified features were grouped according to shape and size characteristics generated by an object-oriented shape analysis program. Five distinct groups of features emerged from the cluster analysis. Group 1 features were small and compact, distributed mostly in the west; Group 2 features were large and dendritic in nature, distributed where the peninsula was narrow. Group 3 features had a longshore orientation with many of them resembling piano keys, distributed in the east. Group 4 features were oriented longshore and ornate in shape. Many of them were similar in shape to Group 2 or 3 features though statistically different enough to be grouped alone; they were distributed mostly in the eastern half of the study area. Group 5 features tended to be elongated, oriented cross-shore, nonbranching, and distributed mostly in the east. At least four flow environments caused characteristic forms. The first flow environment is typified by seaward flowing water encountering a road parallel with the coastline. The water flowing over the road scours deeply on the leeward side (seaward side), denuding beach sediments down to the resistant mud layer (Groups 3 and 4). The second flow environment was caused by a geotube, which breached during the storm and channelized flow through the breaches (Groups 2 and 5). The third flow environment had a comparatively high elevation, high development, and shore-perpendicular roads (Group 2). The fourth flow environment was typified by wide beaches backed by dunes (lost in the storm) as well as flat vegetated areas. Water flowing seaward over the vegetation scoured deeply into troughs after it came off the vegetation (Groups 1, 3, and 4).

Following growing public awareness of the danger from hurricanes and tremendous demands for analysis of loss, many researchers have conducted studies to develop hurricane damage analysis methods. Although researchers have identified the significant indicators, there currently is no comprehensive research for identifying the relationship among the vulnerabilities, natural disasters, and economic losses associated with individual buildings. To address this lack of research, this study will identify vulnerabilities and hurricane indicators, develop metrics to measure the influence of economic losses from hurricanes, and visualize the spatial distribution of vulnerability to evaluate overall hurricane damage. This paper has utilized the Geographic Information System (GIS) to facilitate collecting and managing data, and has combined vulnerability factors to assess the financial losses suffered by Texas coastal counties. A multiple linear regression method has been applied to develop hurricane economic damage predicting models. To reflect the pecuniary loss, insured loss payment was used as the dependent variable to predict the actual financial damage and ratio. Geographical vulnerability indicators, built environment vulnerability indicators, and hurricane indicators were all used as independent variables. Accordingly, the models and findings may possibly provide vital references for government agencies, emergency planners, and insurance companies hoping to predict hurricane damage.

Over the 1951-2009 time period, 47% of all tropical systems in the Atlantic Basin transitioned to post-tropical storms. These storms are capable of producing hurricaneforce winds, torrential, flooding rains and storm surge that floods coastal areas. This study adds to previous climatological work by completing a case-study of Hurricane Ike (2008) and examining how teleconnections such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) contribute to the strength of a transitioning post-tropical storm. T-tests performed show strong statistical relationships between an increase (decrease) in post-tropical storm frequency and warm PDO – La Niña (cold PDO – La Niña), cold PDO – ENSO neutral (warm PDO – ENSO neutral), and warm (cold) AMO conditions. Moreover, nearly significant results were found for the same increase (decrease) and La Niña seasons since (pre) 1980 and for cold (warm) PDO conditions. Modeling the MJO suggests that increased (decreased) relative humidity associated with the wet (dry) phase could increase (decrease) precipitation output from the storm and decrease (increase) forward speed of the storm, decreasing (increasing) wind speeds observed at the surface.