In Jackson, Mississippi, basic needs like access to food and water are critical issues. This research reveals efforts and actors working to improve food access within Jackson’s foodscape. This study uses interview and mapping methodologies, which unearth the challenges and opportunities for food efforts in Jackson. Current food work is analyzed through a cultural lens – How is the work influenced by the unique conditions and aspects of Jackson? – and a temporal lens – How does time impact access? What are historic changes and future visions for Jackson? These investigations contribute to opportunities for developing sustainable food systems, determining spatial, infrastructural, and temporal inaccessibility, increasing understanding of opportunities and challenges for food security, and adding to existing literature on the foodscape. By documenting food security organizations, the built environment, and social dynamics in the current context, this research emphasizes how landscape architecture can contribute to building a more equitable, sustainable food future.

In recent years, rare catastrophic disasters have triggered pharmaceutical supply chain disruptions, resulting in product shortages and other problems that have negatively impacted healthcare delivery. Since the health sector is part of many nations’ critical infrastructure, ensuring minimal disruption in the supporting supply chains is an essential aspect of national security. While traditional risk management approaches have proven adequate for handling independent routine operational risks, these methods are inadequate for infrequent disruptive risks that propagate further risks, producing a domino effect in complex systems. Since today’s pharmaceutical supply chains have many characteristics of complex systems, elucidating the disruptive risks and required resilience capabilities, through knowledge gained from actual disasters, can be valuable in developing mitigation strategies. This research aims to investigate two catastrophic disasters that disrupted pharmaceutical supply chains in recent years. The first case explores the impact of a localized Category IV hurricane that hit Puerto Rico and disrupted the supply chain for saline, an essential product used in the treatment of many illnesses. The risk events that propagated from the disaster are identified and modeled using a Bayesian network to determine where resilience should be strengthened. In accordance with ISO 31000 risk management guidelines, Bayesian networks have been identified as appropriate tools for modeling complex system risks. The second case employs a qualitative research study on the vaccine supply chain supporting mass immunization during the COVID-19 pandemic. A content analysis is conducted to extract the insights of over 100 professionals on disruptors and resilience capability requirements of the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain. The results indicate that a large and diverse set of risk factors and resilience capabilities are pertinent to pharmaceutical supply chains during localized severe weather and global pandemic disasters. Furthermore, to mitigate the impacts of severe weather risk in the case of Puerto Rico, the predominant type of resilience required is absorptive capacity, while in the case of the mass immunization vaccine supply chain, adaptive capacity is key. These findings should be useful to national leaders, pharmaceutical supply chain and healthcare sourcing managers, disaster preparedness officers, and others charged with pharmaceutical supply chain resilience.

This study investigated the efficacy of culturally adapted bibliotherapy in promoting resilience among American Samoan children aged 5-13 years in response to high adolescent suicide rates in the Pacific Islands and the need for culturally adapted and supportive interventions grounded in mental health wellness. Bibliotherapy, particularly the identification with story characters, has been recognized for bolstering mental wellness, resilience, and emotional regulation in children. In this research, the children's response to bibliotherapy was measured through card sorting and forced-choice exercises, assessing their engagement with literature mirroring their experiences. The materials were developed in collaboration with Samoan cultural brokers on island to ensure cultural relevance, focusing on emotions commonly faced by children, such as sadness, anger, and fear, within the context of school bullying and the grief of losing a loved one. Findings suggest that the adapted stories significantly aided the children in relating to the characters and their challenges, demonstrating that culturally sensitive bibliotherapy may be a promising approach for reinforcing resilience in Pacific Islander communities. The study concludes with a discussion on the practical applications of these findings.

In an era marked by pervasive digitization, the reliance on interconnected information and communication technologies (ICTs) has become indispensable for the functioning of modern society. However, this digital transformation has exposed critical infrastructure sectors to a multitude of cyber threats, ranging from malicious cybercriminal activities to state-sponsored cyber espionage. As a result, ensuring the resilience of cybersecurity measures within critical infrastructure has emerged as a paramount concern for governments, organizations, and societies worldwide. This thesis investigates the approaches to cybersecurity resilience protection, with a comparative analysis between Sweden and the United States. Through an examination of cybersecurity risk management practices, threat intelligence sharing mechanisms, and public-private partnerships, the study aims to evaluate the resilience measures implemented in safeguarding vital sectors such as energy, healthcare and finance against cyber threats.  Drawing upon complexity theory and human security theory as theoretical frameworks, the research explores the institutional dynamics and socio-political factors shaping cybersecurity resilience strategies in both countries. By synthesizing empirical data from government reports, literature, industry publications, and expert interviews, the thesis aims to identify strengths and weaknesses together with key challenges, best practices, and areas for improvement in enhancing cybersecurity resilience capabilities. The findings of this study contribute to the academic discourse on cybersecurity resilience and by understanding the comparative strengths and weaknesses of cybersecurity resilience approaches, decision-makers can formulate evidence-based strategies to mitigate cyber risks and foster greater resilience in the face of evolving cyber threats.

The purpose of this study is to contribute knowledge to a sustainable and resilience-promoting framework for tourism companies to be applied in the post-pandemic era. Through the data collection which included the methods of semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and content analysis various findings were found to enhance the framework. It should be noted, however, that the participation was limited to a small number of companies. Despite this limitation, the results of this study suggest that adventure tourism companies could improve their sustainability by including interpretive guiding, eco-friendly infrastructure, and sustainability-promoting activities as central components of their tours to encourage environmentally conscious behavior among customers. Furthermore, adventure tourism companies can move toward sustainability and resilience by considering the needs and conditions of communities and the visiting environment, choosing slower and smaller group transportation, collecting data on consumption and waste, prioritizing employee well-being, and developing skills and financial plans to deal with future challenges. The study's results suggest that adventure tourism companies reverted to their normal operations without making significant adjustments to their business strategies for sustainability, despite the scholars’ vision of a sustainable post-pandemic era, highlighting the existent discrepancy between the theory and practice of sustainable tourism.

This paper brings together the concepts of fiscal health and resilience as they are understood in a contemporary context while seeking to establish whether a quantitative model of analysis can be meaningfully derived and applied to major American cities. Using major recessions from 1977 to 2015 as an exogenous shock, the values for fiscal health are assessed temporally to arrive at an assessment for whether a certain group of cities is inherently more resilient than others. Given subjective nature of the concepts used, this paper also grapples with the fact that any results must be analyzed within a local context. The end result is aimed to produce a tool for cities to compare how they performed in the wake of a recession and eventually work towards an understanding of what policy actions can be done to make a city more resilient. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning / This paper brings together the concepts of fiscal health and resilience as they are understood in a contemporary context while seeking to establish whether a quantitative model of analysis can be meaningfully derived and applied to major American cities. Using major recessions from 1977 to 2015 as an exogenous shock, the values for fiscal health are assessed temporally to arrive at an assessment for whether a certain group of cities is inherently more resilient than others. Given subjective nature of the concepts used, this paper also grapples with the fact that any results must be analyzed within a local context. The end result is aimed to produce a tool for cities to compare how they performed in the wake of a recession and eventually work towards an understanding of what policy actions can be done to make a city more resilient.

Ground transportation systems are essential for the mobility of people, goods and services. Thus, making sure these systems are resilient to the impact of natural and man-made disasters has become a top priority for engineers and policy makers. One of the major obstacles for increasing the resilience of ground transportation systems is the lack of a measuring framework. Such measuring framework is critical for identifying needs, monitoring changes, assessing improvements, and performing cost-benefit analysis. This research addresses this problem by developing a traffic-based framework for measuring the resilience of ground transportation systems under normal and extreme conditions. The research methodology consisted of: (1) creating a microscopic traffic model of the road under study, (2) simulating different intrusions and interventions, and (3) measuring the resilience of the system under the different scenarios using the framework developed. This research expanded the current definition of infrastructure resilience, which includes the assessment of system performance versus time, to add a third dimension of resilience for ground transportation system's applications, namely: location. This third dimension considers how the system changes along the different locations in the network, which reflects more accurately the continuous behavior of a ground transportation network. The framework was tested in a 24 km segment of Interstate 95 in Virginia, near Washington, D.C. Four hazard conditions were simulated: inadequate base capacity, traffic incidents, work zones, and weather events. Intervention strategies tested include ramp meters and the use of the shoulder lane during extreme events. Public policy was also considered as a powerful intervention strategy. The findings of this research shed light over the current and future resilience of ground transportation systems when subject to multiple hazards, and the effects of implementing potential interventions. / Ph. D. / Ground transportation systems are essential for the mobility of people, goods and services. Thus, making sure these systems are <i>resilient</i> to the impact of natural and manmade disasters has become a top priority for engineers and policy makers. Disaster resilience is defined as the ability of a system to withstand the impact of a disaster and recover as quickly as possible. One of the major obstacles for increasing the resilience of ground transportation systems is the lack of a measuring framework. Such measuring framework is critical for identifying needs, monitoring changes, assessing improvements, and performing cost-benefit analysis. This research addresses this problem by developing a traffic-based framework for measuring the resilience of ground transportation systems under normal and extreme conditions. The research methodology consisted of: (1) creating a microscopic traffic model of the road under study, (2) simulating multiple hazards and mitigation strategies, and (3) measuring the resilience of the system under the different scenarios using the framework developed. This research expanded the current definition of infrastructure resilience, which includes the assessment of system performance versus time, to add a third dimension of resilience for ground transportation system’s applications, namely: location. This third dimension considers how the system changes along the different locations in the network, which reflects the continuous behavior of a ground transportation network. The framework was tested in a 24 km segment of Interstate 95 in Virginia, near Washington, D.C. Four hazard conditions were simulated: inadequate base capacity, traffic incidents, work zones, and weather events. Intervention strategies tested include ramp meters and the use of shoulder lanes. Public policy was also considered as a powerful intervention strategy. The findings of this research shed light over the current and future resilience of ground transportation systems when subject to multiple hazards, and the effects of implementing potential interventions.

The American Dream which boasts equal opportunity, meritocracy, and prosperity in accordance with an individual's hard work and dedication continues to instill hope in upward social mobility. Understanding social mobility necessitates an examination of individuals' or groups' ability to move upward or downward in status based on wealth, occupation, education, or some other social variable ("Social mobility," n.d.). Accordingly, social mobility within a hierarchical status system like the United States parallels inequality and presents challenges for underrepresented populations. More specifically, there is a gap that exists in the perceptions, generalizations, and realizations of social mobility for Black men in America resulting in a dichotomous disparity that is perplexing and adds to some of the greatest challenges and barriers to social mobility facing Black men. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to employ a cognitive lens to examine factors affecting the social mobility experiences of Black men throughout their educational and occupational pursuits, and/or community involvement; ultimately giving voice to a traditionally marginalized group. Cognitive problem solving styles, decision making, performed behaviors, and diverse social interactions were explored within the context of negotiating overarching stereotypes, overcoming barriers, making good decisions, and persisting towards social mobility. The conceptual framework for the study took into account cognitive function, race, and resilience by way of Kirton's Adaption-Innovation Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Resilience Theory, respectively. The study findings offer counter-narratives to rebuff dominant ideology about Black men in society, facilitate an understanding of values and motivators, introduce characteristics that aid social mobility, and may inform strategies, policies, and programing that affect Black men. Recommendations for further research are also offered. / Ph. D. / The American Dream continues to inspire hope in upward social mobility. Such hope is grounded in the belief that hard work and merit will be favorably reflected in wealth, occupation, education, and other social variables that influence social mobility. However, a hierarchical status system like the United States parallels inequality and presents challenges for marginalized populations such as Black men. More specifically, a gap exists in the perceptions and realizations of their social mobility, which creates contradictions and adds to some of the greatest challenges and barriers to social mobility facing Black men in America. The purpose of this research study was to examine factors affecting the social mobility experiences of Black men using a cognitive lens, and ultimately give voice to a traditionally marginalized group. Problem solving styles, decision making, behaviors, and social environments were explored via the conceptual framework, which included Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Resilience Theory. The study findings offer counter-narratives about Black men in society, facilitate an understanding of values and motivators, and introduce characteristics that aid social mobility.

Yes / The resilience of systems derives from many inputs, relating both to design and to operational planning. In the latter context the role and effective functioning of the ‘blue light’ emergency services is often critical. The judgements and decisions that have to be made are complex and time-constrained, often undertaken before all the critical information that might be wanted is available. Recent developments in decision research, notably the on-going dual process debate, suggest that the process of decision making adopted is often more complex than had previously been appreciated and strongly linked to both context and individual factors, notably expertise. In the light of such developments, this paper presents an empirical study of emergency responders working in realistic, non-laboratory conditions. It argues that recent moves to recognise the need to support, through the way in which information is provided, more intuitive as well as analytic modes of thinking in decision support are timely and that an important research agenda exists linking decision support design with a fuller understanding of exactly how individuals make their decisions in emergency conditions. / This research was funded by ESRC and 1Spatial, a Cambridge-based software company specialising in high volume, business critical data.

Yes / The literature on the imperativeness of government support for firm survival since the onset of COVID-19 is vast, but scholars have scarcely considered the impact of such assistance on managers' time, nor the extent to which support measures induce resilience and export activity. Accordingly, this study assesses the impact of government support on (1) bureaucracy and (2) resilience using data from 535 Moroccan SMEs. It further evaluates the influence of resilience on direct versus indirect exports, and espouses the institutional voids, resource-based and strategy-creation view to explain the associations through a contingency lens. The results demonstrate that (1) government support increases bureaucracy which, (2) surprisingly triggers and enhances resilience. Furthermore, (3) resilience has a positive impact on direct exports but (4) adversely affects indirect exports. Theoretically, the findings acquiesce extant calls for measurement specificity in export performance. Practically, stakeholders' attention is drawn to the value of managers' time well spent.