Understanding the Marketing and Management of trails using PESTEL Analysis

Trails are an important resource for local communities because they provide health, social, economical, and environmental benefits (“Headwaters Economics”, 2016). When trails are made accessible in towns, it facilitates communal connection, draws in tourists, increases support for conservation lands, and creates safer trails. Trails are valuable to towns because they are an integral piece of their livelihood, therefore the management of trails should be researched to understand how to sustain public use. For this study, twelve (N = 12) conservation commissioners, town managers, and other trail stakeholders from two counties in a Northeastern state were interviewed about how they manage their trails. Results of the study were analyzed and coded, utilizing a marketing theory called PESTEL. Six PESTEL categories were used to interpret stakeholder comments on how trails are managed. The findings of the research show how managing and marketing trails to promote access and use could potentially maximize trail benefits for town communities

Field Report: Implementing a Social Science Capability in a Marine Corps Organization

In 2010 the Marine Corps started a small, experimental capability, the Translational Research Group (TRG), to help the organization more effectively integrate social science and scientists into decision-making. In contrast to other recent military social science programs, TRG focuses inward, on Marines and Marine Corps organizations. The group houses fieldwork-focused social scientists within a military organization so they can understand the problem-framing context and implementation processes, but provides significantly greater academic freedom and protection from over-tasking than is the norm in military research settings. Researchers conduct independently designed projects, support curriculum development, and provide social science advice to a broad scope of military organizations. Although leadership support for the group has been strong, there have been significant impediments to fully institutionalizing the capability. This field report provides an outline of the background and design of the group and examines some of the key challenges encountered during implementation.

Preparing for disaster: a comparative analysis of education for critical infrastructure collapse

This article explores policy approaches to educating populations for potential critical infrastructure collapse in five different countries: the UK, the US, Germany, Japan and New Zealand. ‘Critical infrastructure’ is not always easy to define, and indeed is defined slightly differently across countries – it includes entities vital to life, such as utilities (water, energy), transportation systems and communications, and may also include social and cultural infrastructure. The article is a mapping exercise of different approaches to critical infrastructure protection and preparedness education by the five countries. The exercise facilitates a comparison of the countries and enables us to identify distinctive characteristics of each country’s approach. We argue that contrary to what most scholars of security have argued, these national approaches diverge greatly, suggesting that they are shaped more by internal politics and culture than by global approaches

A Golden Age of Security and Education? Adult Education for Civil Defence in the United States 1950–1970

A number of authors consider that the early period of US security and education (1950–1970) was in some way a ‘golden age’ where there was a prevailing societal orientation towards civil defence. This is supported, to some extent, through ‘Duck and Cover’ type activities in schools and in community preparedness efforts. This article considers whether this portrayal is necessarily correct in the case of adult education. From an analysis of previously classified historical archives in the US National Archives II at the University of Maryland, I consider the success of the civil defense adult education programme (CDAE), and earlier adult education courses, from 1950 to 1970. Rather than being a ‘bottom-up’ process, CDAE was imposed on educators directly through an executive order. There was considerable resistance to the CDAE from other areas of government, from states and from students. CDAE had limited success only so much as the Department of Health and Welfare (DHEW) was able to reconcile it with their own educational objectives. The article concludes by considering the implications of these findings for contemporary adult education for emergencies

I\u27m just thinking out loud here : Making United States homeland security at the local level

U.S. homeland security consists not only in policies and grand cultural shifts, but also in the daily lives of responders and planners. At every level of government, people\u27s activities, their assumptions, confusions, worries, relationships, frustrations, and decisions influence the shape of policy. At the local level, people\u27s practice creates the shape of security policy with which most of the public interacts. It provides an opportunity to examine one area of security, how it is constructed, maintained, and potentially transformed. After the attacks in the fall of 2001, the pace of development and elaboration increased. While the country tried to sort out its ideas about defense and security within its national borders and while the federal government debated how involved it should be and what guidance to give, local people had to make it up as they went along. This dissertation shows U.S. homeland security as practice, as something that is not monolithic, but constructed, not impenetrable, but accessible to ethnography. It contributes to the trend of studying up, supports practice as an organizing concept for anthropological studies, and describes the ethnographic challenges faced by those studying security-related topics. It also describes the methodological challenges associated with research in non-spatially based communities and reliance on participant observation as a technique of choice. The work examines both the daily tasks of homeland security and the more conceptual work of determining what it would mean to make Boston secure. The analysis supports an argument that homeland security in the greater Boston area was practiced through a policy community, a community formed by the direct or indirect influences of policy. It also provides evidence of the roles of innovators, unofficial channels, personal relationships, tacit knowledge, and temporary task-based organization as ways of getting homeland security work done while resisting institutionalization of new structures and relationships. The analysis is based on interpretation of data gathered during two years of fieldwork spanning 9/11/2001 among the planners and responders involved in developing homeland security for the Boston area