A dynamic and relational perspective on vulnerability and fear of crime : The role of physical, psychological, and social factors as well as life events and neighborhood contexts using a between-within person approach

This thesis investigates the usefulness of the concept of vulnerability in explaining the fear of crime. Previous vulnerability approaches in fear-of-crime research are reworked and expanded, integrating a stronger temporal perspective and differentiating more precisely between persons and their contexts. It is demonstrated that between-person differences and within-person changes of most vulnerability factors (e.g., personality traits, financial strain, and supportive networks) are related to fear of crime. This longitudinal perspective provides more reliable support for the vulnerability approach than previous cross-sectional studies because unobserved heterogeneity is reduced. Victimization leads to increased perceived environmental adversity although not having the hypothesized influence on the locus of control. The impact of (early) life events on fear of crime and whether the examined theoretical mechanisms mediate vulnerability factors is investigated in cross-sectional analyses, suggesting that early life events influence fear of crime. The theoretically derived vulnerability mechanisms mediate all investigated vulnerability factors. An examination of neighborhood characteristics and their spatial lags shows that social disadvantage in the (adjacent) neighborhood has a strong contextual influence on fear of crime. Vulnerability links people and environments, indicating an interactive relationship between individual vulnerability factors and external stressors (neighborhood characteristics and victimization). The most substantial interaction is that older people are less affected by neighborhood characteristics than younger people

How older people became less afraid of crime : an age-period-cohort analysis using repeated cross-sectional survey data

One of the most robust predictors of fear of crime is age: Older people tend to be more fearful. Yet, many questions beyond the basic cross-sectional relationship remain unexplored. We investigate cohort effects on fear of crime, applying graphical analyses and a version of the hierarchical age-period-cohort (HAPC) analysis to eight waves of the German subset of the European Social Survey. We hypothesize that health improvements and the educational expansion in postwar Germany led to a decreasing cohort trend, and that children exposed to traumatic experiences and adverse living conditions during and after World War II report higher levels of perceived insecurity throughout the life course. We argue that cross-sectional age differences are, in fact, to a large extent cohort effects, mediated by improved self-rated health and increasing education. The analyses also unveil a recent period effect after 2014. These novel findings add considerably to the understanding of the temporal dynamics of fear of crime

Multi layer recovery enabled with end to end signaling

Within GMPLS framework, the signaling protocol Resource reSerVation Protocol with Traffic Engineering extensions (RSVP-TE) is extended to support the requirements of an Automated Switched Optical Network architecture. This paper presents the extensions of the end-to-end connection services in an overlay network built on two control planes. RSVP-TE protocol extensions are first described between an IP/MPLS router and a SDH/GMPLS core optical cross-connect, defining GMPLS-UNI. Dimensioning of three scenarios proving the benefits of GMPLS-UNI is discussed. Document type: Part of book or chapter of boo