Traumatiska händelser som naturkatastrofer kan orsaka lidande. En person som lider kan vara i behov av tröst. Varje människa och hennes upplevelse av lidande och tröst är unik, men genom att ta lärdom av människors levda erfarenheter av lidande och tröst under tsunamikatastrofen kan förståelsen för dessa fenomen ökas. Denna kunskap är värdefull även för sjuksköterskor som inte möter patienter som överlevt en naturkatastrof. Syftet med studien var att genom en kvalitativ litteraturstudie beskriva svenska turisters upplevelse av lidande och tröst i samband med tsunamikatastrofen i Thailand 2004. Resultatet baserades på personliga skildringar av katastrofen från självbiografier, berättelser på Sveriges Televisions flodvågskatastrof hemsida samt tidningsartiklar som innehållsanalyserades. Resultatet visar att överlevande upplevde både lidande och tröst i samband med tsunamikatastrofen. Lidandet var fysisk, psykiskt och existentiellt. Bristande stöd och resurser bidrog till ökat lidande. De överlevande försökte distansera sig från lidandet på olika sätt. Tröst upplevdes genom gemenskap och närhet, stöd, att få berätta och uttrycka sitt lidande samt genom omsorg om andra. Familj, vänner och andra drabbade spelade en stor roll för upplevelsen av stöd och tröst.

During Nov.2008 to Apr. 2009, firms in Taiwan encountered dramatic financial crisis, and this impact made unemployment rate still climbing and economic depression. In order to reduce the impact from financial tsunami, every firm takes some strategies to resist it. The objective of our study is to find out the influence from financial tsunami on the listed companies. More importantly, we base on the three mechanisms (mimetic force, normative force and coercive force) of institutional theory and the perspectives of population theory to analyze why firms choose those strategies. We collect and analyze 201 returned questionnaires. We find when firms face both high market force, mimetic force and coercive, they tend to choose manipulation strategies. When firms face both low market force, mimetic force and coercive force, they tend to choose compromise strategies. When firms face high market force and low mimetic force and coercive force, they tend to use defiance strategies. When firms face low market force and high mimetic force and coercive force, they tend to use acquiescence strategies.

In 2008-2009, firms in Taiwan encountered dramatic financial tsunami, and this crisis made unemployment rate still climbing and economic depression. In order to reduce the impact from financial tsunami, every firm chooses some strategies to resist it. The purpose of our study is to find out the influence from financial tsunami on the listed companies. More importantly, we base on the three mechanisms (mimetic force, normative force and coercive force) of institutional theory to analyze the real reason for choosing strategies. We collect and analyze 201 returned questionnaires. The finding of this study is that the main factor of choosing strategies is from the mimetic force and normative force. In fact, the enterprise is affected by mimetic pressure deeply, and then it would tend to use the passive strategies. The enterprise is affected by normative pressure deeply, and then it would tend to use the active strategy. Interestingly, whether the enterprise is affected by coercive pressure or not, it doesn¡¦t affect the strategies choosing.

In this thesis, detailed tsunami numerical modeling study was applied to the selected case studies, Fethiye town (Turkey) and Kiparissia-Zakintos-Pylos (Greece) in Mediterranean, using rupture-specific tsunami sources which can generate tsunamis in Mediterranean. As a first step of the study, the general database of Fethiye and Kiparissia-Zakintos-Pylos were integrated to GIS-based environment to organize, analyze and display reliable data from different sources. Secondly, for each earthquake scenario, the tsunami propagation and coastal amplifications were computed by TUNAMI N3 to evaluate the coastal amplifications of tsunamis and understand the tsunami propagation for the cases. As the final step, a study of inundation areas of probable tsunamis in these regions was performed. Available results were used to understand the effects of tsunamis and assist in developing mitigation strategies. Methods and results were presented and discussed.

In recent years the negative effects of tsunamis in the Indian Ocean dramatically increased. Although, this subject became very popular lately, the far-field activities of tsunamis are needed to be evaluated in Indian Ocean. In this thesis, Maldives and Sumatra islands were emphasized to analyze the effects of the transoceanic propagation of tsunamis in Indian Ocean. At first, using GIS Based softwares, the geographical data of the region were extracted and organized for analyzing. Secondly, a worst earthquake scenario was initiated at Sumatra which is located at a long distance from Maldives Islands. Then, corresponding effects of transoceanic tsunami were analyzed and accordingly coastal amplifications near Maldivian Islands were computed by NAMI DANCE. As a final step, an evaluation study was carried out to understand the transoceanic propagation behavior of tsunamis in Indian Ocean and results were discussed.

<p>Traumatiska händelser som naturkatastrofer kan orsaka lidande. En person som lider kan vara i behov av tröst. Varje människa och hennes upplevelse av lidande och tröst är unik, men genom att ta lärdom av människors levda erfarenheter av lidande och tröst under tsunamikatastrofen kan förståelsen för dessa fenomen ökas. Denna kunskap är värdefull även för sjuksköterskor som inte möter patienter som överlevt en naturkatastrof. Syftet med studien var att genom en kvalitativ litteraturstudie beskriva svenska turisters upplevelse av lidande och tröst i samband med tsunamikatastrofen i Thailand 2004. Resultatet baserades på personliga skildringar av katastrofen från självbiografier, berättelser på Sveriges Televisions flodvågskatastrof hemsida samt tidningsartiklar som innehållsanalyserades. Resultatet visar att överlevande upplevde både lidande och tröst i samband med tsunamikatastrofen. Lidandet var fysisk, psykiskt och existentiellt. Bristande stöd och resurser bidrog till ökat lidande. De överlevande försökte distansera sig från lidandet på olika sätt. Tröst upplevdes genom gemenskap och närhet, stöd, att få berätta och uttrycka sitt lidande samt genom omsorg om andra. Familj, vänner och andra drabbade spelade en stor roll för upplevelsen av stöd och tröst.</p>

<p>When the Tsunami occurred on Boxing Day 2004 it caused a major stress upon the governmental agencies in not only the affected areas but also in states that had a large number of citizens in the affected area. The governmental agencies were not prepared for the demands from the citizenry in these countries to deal with rescue and crisis management in areas situated halfway around the globe. This thesis main purpose is to research what the causal mechanisms of Sweden’s and Finland’s crisis management were through the method of process tracing. Taking its theoretical stance in Allison’s & Zelikow’s three models of decision making, the thesis compares the course of events of the first two critical days in Sweden and Finland to establish what mistakes were made during this critical period. The main findings of the essay show that none of the theories is on its own capable of explaining the chain of events, but a combination of the organisational model and the governmental politics model do prove the necessity of trained crisis personnel as decision-makers early on in crisis management as well as the need for an organisational structure with a linear and clear chain of command.</p>

In this thesis I based on Fowler’s method of syntax analysis construct a flow scheme which I then use to make a syntax analysis of former State Secretary Lars Danielsson’s statements, in his autobiography, regarding his responsibility in the Swedish government’s management of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster. The focus of the flow scheme is how grammatical constructions can be used in the interest of rhetoric’s to on the syntax (non-explicit) level of the text indicate and place responsibility with or outside of involved individuals. The main conclusion of the syntax analysis performed is that Danielsson in his autobiography in fact does not use very many of the constructions described in the flow scheme, whereby it can be concluded that the syntax analysis in this case wasn’t so ”revealing”. However two complementary methods of text analysis; a metaphor analysis of the title of Danielsson’s autobiography ”In the shadow of power” and an analysis of the explicit level of the text, has revealed a conscious rhetorical argumentation regarding the question and placing of responsibility. A functional tool for syntax analysis has furthermore, regardless of the results, been constructed and is free for others to use and modify in their research.

A key goal of tsunami research is to quantitatively reconstruct flow parameters from paleotsunami deposits in order to better understand the geohazards of coastal areas. These reconstructions rely on grain-size and thickness measurements of tsunami deposits, combined with simple models that allow an inversion from deposit characteristics to wave characteristics. I conducted flume experiments to produce a data set that can be used to evaluate inversion models for tsunami deposition under controlled boundary conditions. Key variables in the flume experiments are sediment grain-size distribution, flow velocity and depth, and depth of water ponded in the flume before the tsunami bore was released. Physical experiments were run in a 32 m-long outdoor flume at The University of Texas at Austin. The flume has a head box with a specialized mechanical lift gate that allows instantaneous release of water to create a bore. Various sediment mixtures (silt to very coarse sand) are introduced to the upstream end of the channel as a low dune positioned just below the lift gate. The bore entrained the sediment mixture, producing an unambiguous suspension-dominated deposit in the downstream half of the channel. Deposits were sampled for grain-size and thickness trends. The experimental results capture characteristics of many recent and paleotsunami deposits, including consistent fining in the transport direction. In addition to overall fining, trends in deposit sorting and coarse (D95) and fine (D10) fractions reveal the importance of sediment-source grain-size distribution on tsunami deposit attributes. / text

This thesis examines the news coverage of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis that devastated the country of Japan in March 2011 from a comparative standpoint. Drawing on the key concepts in the theory of social constructionism and frame analysis, the series of studies in this thesis comparatively examines how cultures and value systems factored into the process of news production, dissemination and consumption when it comes to the news stories on what the Japanese government officially named the Great East Japan Earthquake. The first section looks at how Japan and its people were portrayed amid disaster relief efforts and analyzes how culture itself has become the topic of discussion and part of reality construction. The second section, on frame analysis, focuses on the workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, often called the Fukushima 50 by the Western media, and examines the cultural characteristics that contributed to the observable discrepancies in the ways they were represented by the Japanese media and their Western counterparts. The third study aims to shed light on the environment surrounding today’s foreign correspondents and international news reporting in the context of Japan, investigating what factors influence the ways journalist go about reporting and framing their versions of realities. The fourth section attempts to deconstruct the news narratives in terms of risk communication by paying particular attention to how people reacted to the coverage of potential dangers of radiation leaks as well as the tsunami warnings in Tohoku area. In the end, the series of studies described above underlines how cultural factors significantly affected the ways in which the journalists covered Japan in 2011 as well as the ways news audiences understood what was going on. The thesis argues that there are two types of cultural faming that contributed greatly to the social construction of realities in the aftermath of the triple disasters. The first type of cultural framing was observed when reporters consistently made the culture of Japan and its supposedly “unique” values as the main frame of news narratives. It often implied that the Japanese culture was somewhat exotic or alien through foreign eyes. The second type of cultural framing was observed when the cultural dispositions of journalists and audience framed the potential risk such as the incoming tsunami and the vital newsmakers such as workers in Fukushima Daiichi using familiar cultural molds. The finding accentuated the intricacy and precarious nature of “realities” in news reports. The research also indicated that when cultural factors in news process dictate and determine the focal point of reality perception, they tend to bring about racial discussions and stereotypical images in narratives. / published_or_final_version / Sociology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy