Standing closest to the flame: Community wildfire planning and the Healthy Forest Act

Recently, national fire policy has been redirected from a primary focus on suppression towards a more integrated and comprehensive approach developed at the community level. As part of this policy shift, Congress passed the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (P.L. 108-148) in 2003 encouraging communities to develop community wildfire protection plans (CWPPs) to guide fuel reduction and wildfire mitigation efforts on both federal and nonfederal lands. This research examines U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and community collaboration in the development of CWPPs through a case study analysis of four communities in two western states. The social and decision-making processes used in the development of CWPPs are examined in each community using the policy sciences approach and decision process framework. A cross-case comparison reveals the influence of social process factors and effectiveness of each community\u27s decision process to address the wildfire problem. The primary finding of this research is the critical role played by the USFS in the success of CWPP planning efforts. Additional recommendations are provided for improving the effectiveness of community decision-making processes to address this important and pressing management issue

All-lands management: Convening communities and their lands around fire management

Broadly defined, All-lands Management (ALM) is a land management approach involving collaborative, science-based ecosystem restoration at the landscape scale, across ownership and jurisdictional boundaries. My research investigates collaborative groups working to reduce wildfire risk by applying ALM. Fire risk in the Pacific West (California and Oregon) is increasing in severity and extent due to fire suppression and is exacerbated by the effects of drought, climate change, and expanding residential development. For decades federal, state, and local entities have expressed the need to work collaboratively, across boundaries and ownerships to reintroduce fire back onto the landscape to restore forest resiliency. This research reveals barriers that prevent broader ALM utilization, framing the implementation difficulties as bureaucratic rigidity problems. Ultimately, the goal of my research is to reveal the capacities of the cases this study is based that enable ALM. I conducted in-depth interviews, participant observation, and document analysis with two case studies: the Western Klamath Restoration Partnership (WKRP) and the Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project (AFR). The cases demonstrate how ALM is being implemented in different contexts, as well as existing social, economic, and political barriers to its effective implementation. Both cases have employed principles of the 2010 National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy – by following these principles both groups aim to shift out of a full suppression model of fire management into a more resilience based model. Both have faced a plethora of challenges, but have problem-solved differently. I explore the ways the two cases developed strategies to enhance their capacities for ALM

Air Force Institute of Technology Contributions to Air Force Research and Development, Calendar Year 1987

From the introduction:The primary mission of the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) is education, but research and consulting are essential integral elements in the process. This report highlights AFIT\u27s contributions to Air Force research and development activities [in 1987]

The Complexity of the Consistency and N-representability Problems for Quantum States

QMA (Quantum Merlin-Arthur) is the quantum analogue of the class NP. There are a few QMA-complete problems, most notably the ``Local Hamiltonian'' problem introduced by Kitaev. In this dissertation we show some new QMA-complete problems. The first one is ``Consistency of Local Density Matrices'': given several density matrices describing different (constant-size) subsets of an n-qubit system, decide whether these are consistent with a single global state. This problem was first suggested by Aharonov. We show that it is QMA-complete, via an oracle reduction from Local Hamiltonian. This uses algorithms for convex optimization with a membership oracle, due to Yudin and Nemirovskii. Next we show that two problems from quantum chemistry, ``Fermionic Local Hamiltonian'' and ``N-representability,'' are QMA-complete. These problems arise in calculating the ground state energies of molecular systems. N-representability is a key component in recently developed numerical methods using the contracted Schrodinger equation. Although these problems have been studied since the 1960's, it is only recently that the theory of quantum computation has allowed us to properly characterize their complexity. Finally, we study some special cases of the Consistency problem, pertaining to 1-dimensional and ``stoquastic'' systems. We also give an alternative proof of a result due to Jaynes: whenever local density matrices are consistent, they are consistent with a Gibbs state.Comment: PhD thesis. Yay, no more grad school!! (Finished in August, but did not get around to posting it until now.) 91 pages, a few figures, some boring sections. Has detailed proofs of results in quant-ph/0604166 and quant-ph/0609125. Ch.4 is a preliminary sketch of 0712.1388. Ch.5 is quant-ph/060301

Railwaymen in the North East of England 1890-1930: Industrial and Political Attitudes and Policies

The thesis begins with an analysis of railwaymen in the North East and an examination of the characteristics of the North East of England. It examines the state of trade unionism and industrial relations at the end of the nineteenth century on a local, regional and national basis. It pursues those developments through the first decade of the twentieth century and analyses the political situation over the same period to the extent that this is relevant to the situation of railwaymen. It then looks at individual strikes before the First World War and the hiatus which occurred during the War. It analyses the build-up to industrial strife after the War and up to, and during, the 1926 General Strike and its aftermath. It then follows through political attitudes and policies from 1918-1930. Finally, it considers to what extent there was a separate tradition among railwaymen in the North East throughout the period under study

Essays on operational productivity and customer satisfaction in offshore software projects

In recent times, both academia and practitioners have increasingly focused on the importance of offshore outsourcing. Analysts estimate that the offshore component of IT services is expected to rise to $70 billion by 2007. Despite this increase, the popular press has cited dissatisfaction among firms that have outsourced software projects to offshore locations. Primary reasons cited for the customer dissatisfaction with outsourcing include the increased complexity of managing the relationship, reduced productivity and reduced operational effectiveness. This issue has not received much academic attention. This dissertation attempts to address this gap in the academic literature by studying the problem from two different perspectives of a software supply chain. The first perspective is effectiveness – where the focus is on managing the internal processes to have a positive impact on customers. This is important, because a satisfied customer is key to a successful and profitable organization. Accordingly, in Chapter 2 of this dissertation, we study the determinants of project performance and customer satisfaction in outsourced offshore software projects. The second perspective is the internal efficiency – where focus is on increasing the efficiency of processes and people; thus, leading to increase in productivity. Clearly these two perspectives are intertwined. An understanding of factors affecting productivity of individuals will enable the managers to set appropriate goals for team members, improve delivery performance, and ultimately increase customer satisfaction. Chapters 3 and 4 of this dissertation investigate productivity improvement using software maintenance as a context. In Chapter 3, we investigate the role of both individual-level factors, such as overall experience, task variety, and newness of task handled, and team-level factors such as team size, new team member entry, and team member exit, on individual productivity. Next, in Chapter 4, we investigate how productivity can be improved by better allocation of individual’s effort to tasks that have the following property: the longer it takes to resolve the task, the less is the likelihood that the task will be completed successfully

GVSU Press Releases, 1967

A compilation of press releases for the year 1967 submitted by University Communications (formerly News & Information Services) to news agencies concerning the people, places, and events related to Grand Valley State University