A análise da morfologia é uma importante ferramenta para avaliação das características internas do sistema bacia hidrográfica. Os atributos morfológicos podem demonstrar um padrão de comportamento dos processos ocorridos em seu interior, sobretudo os processos hidrogeomorfológicos, como enxurradas e corridas de detritos. As corridas de detritos possuem características específicas, em sua maioria relacionadas aos canais de drenagem, portanto, sua análise morfológica é fundamental para o entendimento do processo. São importantes os estudos que visam compreender de forma mais aprofundada os condicionantes relacionados à ocorrência de corridas de detritos, devido tanto à magnitude quanto e, principalmente, ao seu poder destrutivo, e, sobretudo, devido a recorrência do processo. Conforme o exposto, esta pesquisa teve como objetivo central avaliar a suscetibilidade de bacias hidrográficas a partir da análise de parâmetros morfológicos e sua relação com a magnitude das corridas de detritos ocorridas em 1967 no município de Caraguatatuba/SP, visando a elaboração de um índice de potencial de magnitude e suscetibilidade com base nos resultados. Para alcançar tal objetivo, as seguintes etapas metodológicas foram definidas: i) seleção de bacias hidrográficas com evidência de ocorrência de corridas de detritos; ii) mapeamento dos parâmetros morfológicos; iii) caracterização morfológica dos depósitos e definição da magnitude das corridas de detritos de 1967; e iv) elaboração de índice de potencial de magnitude e suscetibilidade à ocorrência de corridas de detritos. Os resultados mostraram a influência dos parâmetros morfológicos na magnitude das corridas de detritos, com destaque para perfil longitudinal, hierarquia de drenagem e área da bacia acima de 25°. As bacias classificadas com nível de magnitude maior obtiveram os valores mais críticos com relação a estes parâmetros. A metodologia utilizada para determinação da magnitude se mostrou eficiente, ficando as consequências potenciais condizentes com a realidade. Com o estabelecimento da relação entre os valores críticos dos parâmetros e a maior magnitude, foi possível a elaboração de um índice de potencial de magnitude e suscetibilidade com base nos parâmetros morfológicos. Esta pesquisa contribui para os estudos referentes às corridas de detritos, sob uma perspectiva geomorfológica, agregando mais informações a respeito do processo e colaborando para o melhor entendimento de sua dinâmica na Serra do Mar. / The morphological analysis is an important tool in the evaluation of the inner characteristics of the hydrographic basin system. Its attributes demonstrate a pattern of behave of the processes occurred in the basin, especially hydrogeomorphic processes, such as flood and debris flow. Debris flow have specific characteristics, mostly related to the drainage channels, being primordial the study of the characteristics of the hydrographic basin. Studies which aim to better understand the conditioning factors related to the occurrence of debris flow are important due to the magnitude but also the recorrence of the process. As explained before, the main goal of this research was to evaluate susceptibility of hydrographic basins through morphological parameters and its relation with the magnitude of the debris flows occurred in Caraguatatuba, 1967, aiming to elaborate an index of potential of magnitude and susceptibility based in the results. To achieve this goal, the following methodological steps were defined: (i) selection of hydrographic basins with evidence of occurrence of debris flow; (ii) morphological parameters mapping; (iii) morphological characterization of the deposits and definition of the magnitude of debris flow; and (iv) elaboration of an index of potential of magnitude and susceptibility to de occurrence of debris flow. The results showed the influence of the morphological parameters in the magnitude of debris flows, highlighting the parameters longitudinal profile, drainage hierarchy and area above 25°. The basins classified with higher magnitude obtained the most critical values relation to those parameters. The methodology used to determine the magnitude proved to be efficient, with the potential consequences consistent with the reality. With the establishment of the relation between the critical values of the morphological parameters and the basins with higher magnitude, it was possible to elaborate an index of potential of magnitude and susceptibility. This research contributes to the studies related to debris flow from a geomorphological approach, adding more informations about the process and collaborating to better understand the debris flow dynamics in the Serra do Mar.

Two of the main challenges facing communities and governments in developing countries are the reduction of risks of hydro-meteorological hazards and adaptation to climate change. As climate variability and change impacts are becoming more visible in the form of disasters, and are negatively affecting climate sensitive livelihoods and eroding communities' ability to fully recover, leading to increased vulnerability to subsequent climate risks. The unpredictability of current weather systems, therefore, makes it very difficult for poor governments and households to deal with adverse impacts of climate change. Furthermore, the fragmented approach to DRR and CCA with regards to practice, policy and organisational frameworks for dealing with climate risks is resulting in coordination challenges for the government departments. This study aimed to explore how local households and communities perceive and are experiencing and coping with climate change and drought, and what that means for integrating hydro-meteorological disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. The study was carried out in Chirumhanzu district and the methods used for data collection included: 217 household surveys; six focus group discussions; participatory learning actions methods; key informant's interviews and document review. The majority of households owned low value material assets and had low levels of livelihood capitals and this exposed them to the impacts of climate variability and successive droughts. This low adaptive capacity largely affected their ability to engage effective drought risk reduction and adaptation strategies for their livelihood activities in small-scale farming and livestock rearing. Vulnerability to climate risks was exacerbated by seasonal weather forecasts, which were deemed by some households to be unreliable, inaccurate and not easily understood, while others used of indigenous knowledge. Successive droughts affected households' access to food and cash income for other household demands. Other non-climatic factors that contributed to adverse drought impacts at the household level were an emphasis on reactive humanitarian aid approach and the poor economy in Zimbabwe. Additionally, the policy framework for dealing with climate change and drought hazards is fragmented and weak; and is housed in different government departments making it difficult to coordinate and implement. To improve climate risk management, there is need for the government to appreciate that drought risk reduction and climate change adaptation are all about reducing vulnerability. Understanding this, might assist in improving government focus on addressing the underlying causes of vulnerability and mainstreaming DRR and CCA into development processes through addressing specific and generic adaptive capacities. The thesis argues that as long as rural households are involved in climate sensitive livelihood activities and not getting meaningful intervention to diversity and/or better intensify their livelihood activities, they will continue to be vulnerable to successive climate risks. This fragmented approach to dealing with climate risks, is not yielding any successful results with regards to building resilience, risk reduction or adaptation of rural households.

Notre thèse présente une approche sociale et environnementale de l'histoire des cyclones dans la société réunionnaise : il s'agit d'évaluer l'impact d'un événement destructeur, le cyclone, dans la mémoire collective et individuelle, dans l'évolution des sciences, des techniques, des alertes, de la gestion de la crise, de l'organisation des secours et de l'aménagement du territoire. Le cyclone peut donc être un objet d'Histoire à part entière. Parallèlement, notre recherche consiste à comprendre les conséquences des cyclones d'un point de vue géographique et humain. L'impact des cyclones est différent selon le lieu frappé et l'habitat ainsi que de leur évolution dans le temps. Par ailleurs, l'histoire des comportements humains apporte d'autres éléments à l'enquête avancée : la solidarité intègre cette région du monde dans un contexte national et international par l'aide sollicitée auprès de la métropole et d'autres pays. Les autorités et les services compétents entrent en compte pour l'administration de l'île et les choix à faire tant en terme de prévention, que d'information et de mobilisation. Parmi les cyclones marquants du XXème siècle, le cyclone des 26 et 27 janvier 1948 est communément appelé « le cyclone du siècle ». Cependant, le cyclone Jenny (28 février 1962), par ses apports, semble être le point de départ d'un demi-siècle de mutations. Et de fait, une césure dans l'histoire de la société réunionnaise. L'objectif final de notre recherche est de contribuer au progrès d'une prise de conscience collective des cyclones afin de mieux limiter les dégâts humains et matériels lors de leurs passages. / Our thesis presents a social and environmental analysis of cyclones history into Reunion Island society: Our purpose is to estimate the impact of a destructive event, the cyclone, on the collective and individual memory, upon sciences and technology evolution, crisis management, emergency services organisation and area development. Then, cyclone can entirely be an object of History. At the same time, we aim to understand cyclones consequences from a geographical and human point of view. Cyclones impact can be different, depending on the place or housing conditions and the way that they evolve in the time. Moreover, history of human behaviour bring other elements to our enquiry: mutual assistance integrate this world area in a national and international context, with help request to French metropolis and others countries. We must take administration and civil services into account in the island management and in the choices to be made, as far as prevention, information or mobilization are concerned. Among outstanding cyclones of the XXth century, January the 26th and 27th of 1948 cyclonic system is usually considered as “the cyclone of the century”. However, the cyclone “Jenny” (February the 28th of 1962), by its contributions, could be considered as a starting point of a half century of mutations. And then a cut into history of Reunion Island society. The final aim of our research is to contribute to a progress of a collective consciousness of cyclones in order to limit human and material damages.

Children’s rights are human rights, regardless their vulnerability and dependence on adults. However, the situation of children’s rights in Haiti has always been delicate and it became even more fragile in the aftermath of the 2010 Earthquake and the 2016 Hurricane Matthew. Within this paper, the sociology of disaster theory together with case study and legal analysis as methods aim at analysing the effects of the two natural disasters on Haitian children’s rights. The paper also seeks to understand whether any differences could be noticed between the outcomes of the two catastrophes as well as to analyse the international and national institutional response to the aforementioned disasters. It is concluded that the two natural disasters had an enormous impact on the most important rights of Haitian children. Not many differences could be noticed, between the two events, and regardless the aid provided by the international community, Haitian children’s rights are still neglected, as we speak.

The generation of robust causal evidence is of paramount importance for informing policy and assessing the effect of different interventions in the educational setting. The objective of this thesis is to design and apply new methods for causal inference, particularly in observational studies, to answer pressing educational questions and provide evidence of the effect of specific events and policies. This thesis consists of three papers that use different identification strategies, such as a natural experiment, a regression discontinuity design, and a difference-in-differences approach, in combination with matching techniques, to identify the effect that specific educational interventions and a natural disaster had on students' and schools' outcomes in Chile. In the first paper, Vielma, Zubizarreta, and I present a new way of matching in observational studies that is able to (i) balance covariates directly with multiple-valued treatments, (ii) build self-weighted matched samples that are representative of a target population, and (iii) handle matching problems in large datasets in a fast and efficient way. The key insights of this new approach to matching are balancing the treatment groups relative to a target population and positing a linear-sized mixed integer formulation of the matching problem. We illustrate this method using both a simulation study and a case study. In the observational study, we estimate the effect that different intensities of the 2010 Chilean earthquake had on senior high school students' educational outcomes. We find that while increasing levels of exposure to the earthquake had a negative impact on school attendance, it had no effect on college admission test scores. In my second paper, I tackle the issue of generalization in a regression discontinuity design. Regression discontinuity designs are a commonly used approach for causal inference in observational studies. Under mild continuity assumptions, the method provides a robust estimate of the average treatment effect for observations directly at the threshold of assignment. However, it has limited external validity for populations away from the cutoff. This paper proposes a strategy to overcome this limitation by identifying a wider interval around the cutoff for estimation using a Generalization of a Regression Discontinuity Design (GRD). In this interval, predictive covariates are used to explain away the relationship between the assignment score and the outcome of interest for the pre-intervention period. Under the partially-testable assumption of conditional time-invariance in absence of the treatment, the generalization bandwidth can be applied to the post-intervention period, allowing for the estimation of average treatment effects for populations away from the cutoff. To illustrate this method, GRD is applied in the context of free higher education in Chile to estimate effects for vulnerable students. I find evidence that students at the margin of eligibility were positively affected by the policy, increasing both application and enrollment rates to university. In terms of a generalized effect, evidence is also consistent with an increasing effect as we get away from the cutoff. Finally, the third paper in this thesis addresses the question of unintended consequences in school segregation due to the introduction of a targeted voucher scheme. I use a difference-in-difference approach, in combination with matching on time-stable covariates, to estimate the effect that the 2008 Chilean voucher policy had on both average students' household income and academic performance at the school level. Results show that even though the policy had a positive effect on schools' standardized test scores, closing the gap between schools that subscribed to the policy compared to those that did not, there was also an increase in the differences between socioeconomic characteristics at the school level, such as average household income.

The three largest storms in Sweden in modern time (1954, 1969 and 2005) are in focus in this thesis. By doing a narrative analysis of the countries four leading newspapers, the aim is to find out what stories are constructed during and after big crises such as storms. And more specifically what those narratives say about Sweden, being looked at in a historical rearview window. The result shows that the people of Sweden are portrayed as gender conservatives and that they are all ethnic swedes. There are no room for immigrants in the narratives. The narrative concerning every storm differs though, depending how the inhabitants act. In 1954 Sweden is portraited as a nation where everybody do things together and helps out. During the storm 1969 ordinary peoples efforts are no longer requested. The state promises to take care of everything. When it can´t keep its promises voices from the media and the government are requesting an even stronger state. But in 2005 there have been an era of liberalisation and deregulation. Private companies are now in charge of the electric power supply. After the storm the power is out in many places and people behave differently. Some are passive and demands that the electricity works, other are doing the best of the situation. People are more active on the countryside than in the cities. All are however blaming the electricity companies. But what we see is a more fragmented country than before, where the biggest victims are the small foresters who in many cases have lost everything, they own. They were victims even in the earlier storms, but in 1969, when Sweden, in many ways, was a world leading country the foresters’ stories were not to be heard. In 2005 the forest farmers story are once again told, they who loses everything and, in some cases, commit suicide. They stand as reminders of the old and very poor Sweden, an outskirt in the world. This narrative can have its explanation in the assumption that when the times are uncertain, or changing, a nation looks at its history.

This dissertation proposes a theoretical framework of attitude change under threatening conditions based on parallel updating. More specifically, I focus on public preferences for policies to address terrorist attacks, pandemics, climate change and natural disasters in periods when these threats are elevated. I test my argument with four original survey experiments, which include eleven interventions and draw on a nationally diverse sample of a total of 9,110 American citizens. These interventions identify the effects of factual information, partisan cues, incidental emotions, ideological and non-ideological framing, and memory priming. Evidence from these experiments provides consistent support that public opinion updating exhibits five characteristics. First, citizens change their views by a small amount. Second, citizens’ opinions move in the direction of information. Third, attitude change occurs regardless of political predispositions and individual attributes. Fourth, exposure to information about a specific policy area does not impact preferences for policies unrelated to this area. The only exception to this rule is when the treatment is emotionally strong. Finally, attitude- and identity-based cross pressures may introduce only minimal bias in the manner citizens update their opinions. These conclusions strongly challenge theories of public opinion which argue that individual differences in more-or-less enduring political and psychological characteristics can lead to political polarization. Although the persuasive techniques studied here are not equally potent in changing political views, the findings invite cautious optimism about the capacity of citizens to update opinions in a reasonable and accurate manner, even when the circumstances are unfavorable. Finally, the results suggest that the roots of polarization should be searched for more directly, notably in the increasingly fragmented political, social, and media environments.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the health outcomes of diabetic patients in Puerto Rico, before, during, and after Hurricane Maria, in 2017. The Department of Health in Puerto Rico provided the secondary data for the variables low-density lipoproteins (LDL) cholesterol, hemoglobin A1C (HbA1c), mortality, and consumer price index (CPI). The inclusion criteria were participants for whom electronic data were available before, during, and after Hurricane Maria; the sample size was 450. The theoretical framework for this investigation was the health outcomes and impact assessment. The data were analyzed by univariate and analysis of variance (ANOVA) to compare means and normality test analysis. Results of this study revealed that before Hurricane Maria, diabetics in Puerto Rico did not have control of their health. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) guideline for Hgb AIC is < 7.0; prior to Hurricane Maria Hgb AIC was 7.30 and after it was 7.21. The ADA LDL goal is

Africa is home to more than 40% of the world’s population of internally displaced persons (IDPs).4 IDPs, according to the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement5, are persons or groups of persons who have been forced to leave their homes or places of habitual residence as a result of – or in order to avoid the effects of – armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights, natural disasters or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognised state border. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2010. / A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Law University of Pretoria, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Masters of Law (LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa). Prepared under the supervision of Mr. S Tindifa at the Faculty of Law, Makerere University, Uganda. 2010. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/ / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

Media is used by audiences for more than its simple role as information provider. Audiences have been found to use news providers output in a multitude of ways. It has been found that some audience members have used such output as a way to gain social capital that aids in the generation of feelings of social cohesion with their community. This has been found to be especially true during the impact phase of a natural disaster, such as a hurricane (Perez-Lugo, 2004). Unfortunately what news providers specifically articulate that might have this latent use by audiences has not been studied as much as would be necessary for a concrete understanding of the topic that would aid other news providers in designing output during future disasters. As such, here this paper will explore what the content of the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper articulated during the impact phase of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans that had the potential to serve this latent function for its readers.