Human-Environment Interactions: A Plea for the Humanities

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Tuana
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Human Environment

Research on human-environment interactions often neglects the resources of the humanities. Hurricane Katrina and the resulting levee breaches in New Orleans offer a case study on the need for inclusion of the humanities in the study of human-environment interactions, particularly the resources they provide in examining ethics and value concerns. Methods from the humanities, when developed in partnership with those from the sciences and social sciences, can provide a more accurate, effective, and just response to the scientific and technological challenges we face as a global community.

scholarly journals Agent-Based Modeling, Scientific Reproducibility, and Taphonomy: A Successful Model Implementation Case Study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Molly Carney ◽  
Benjamin Davies
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Agent Based Modeling ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Successful Model ◽  
Implementation Studies ◽  
Successful Replication ◽  
Access Data

There is a growing use of agent-based model (ABM) simulations to reconstruct past human-environment interactions. ABMs are useful in that they offer scientists the opportunity to model processes, phenomena, and study systems that may not be otherwise reproducible or testable. Replication or re-implementation studies of ABMs are, however, infrequently undertaken, and there are few examples within archaeology or other social sciences. This paper documents the process of a successful ABM replication study, as well as two additional modifications to the original model. Results corroborate the findings of the original geoarchaeological model and indicate that episodic geomorphic events significantly affect archaeological deposit formation and the inferences drawn from associated radiocarbon records. One revision of the model further demonstrates that episodic fluvial events can create highly varied radiocarbon distributions. The second modification illustrates that excavation data helps to fill in hiatuses in radiocarbon chronologies on depositional landforms, although there is no effect across landscapes subject to erosion. This successful replication exercise also illustrates the value of open access data and analyses in reproducing, testing, and expanding upon archaeological research and theory building.

Building Trust through Social Media in Times of Crisis: Cultural Persuasion, Citizen News, and the Cultural Affordances of Blogs

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Ostertag
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Building Trust ◽  
Cultural Codes ◽  
Mass Migration

Research on trust and news tends to focus on professional news (agents, organizations, institutions), ignores the content of news, and takes place during relatively settled times. This article seeks to remedy these gaps by examining how citizens used blogs to make and share news during a natural disaster and its aftermath. It draws on a case study of blogging in the wake of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and examines the perspective of blog users to understand how they built trust in each other and in their shared realities of the recovery and rebuilding periods. It draws on cultural sociology to illustrate how civil and anticivil cultural codes, embodied in culturally specific referents, were drawn upon to construct news messages and messengers, and by extension, trust in each other and a grounded ontological understanding of reality. It argues that the cultural affordances of the blog platform were helpful in users’ ability to build both forms of trust. It concludes with implications for emerging crises of climate change, global pandemics and the mass migration these produce.

Living with Water in the Era of Climate Change: Lessons from the Lafitte Greenway in Post-Katrina New Orleans

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billy Fields ◽  
Jeffrey Thomas ◽  
Jacob A. Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Urban Neighborhoods ◽  
Public Land ◽  
Infrastructure Project

The research examines the shift from flood-resistant policies and plans to flood resilience. We use a case study of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina to illustrate this unfolding process and the emergence of a “living with water” approach to green infrastructure. The article highlights the challenges of this shifting policy landscape through the case of the Lafitte Greenway, a green infrastructure project that transformed a three-mile corridor of underutilized public land into a linear park running through flood-prone neighborhoods. Through the experience of creating this greenway, planners in New Orleans learned valuable lessons about US disaster rebuilding policies and how to implement green infrastructure in urban neighborhoods.

scholarly journals Efficient Utilization Of InterContinental New Orleans Hotel Resources After Hurricane Katrina: A Case Study

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdy Noguera ◽  
Carlos Omar Trejo-Pech ◽  
Jorge Santana
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Cost Of Capital ◽  
Flow Analysis ◽  
Weighted Average ◽  
Capital Budgeting ◽  
Efficient Utilization ◽  
Discounted Cash Flow ◽  
Upper Level

A significant capital budgeting problem faced the InterContinental New Orleans Hotel after the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The problem was presented to students as a case study.  Students were provided firm specific and market data to perform a detailed discounted cash flow analysis, including estimation of the weighted average cost of capital and the corresponding sensitivity analysis.  The case is designed to be used in an upper level undergraduate corporate finance class.

Regeneration through Genre: Romancing Katrina in Crime Fiction from Tubby Meets Katrina to K-Ville

2010 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 553-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
NAHEM YOUSAF
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Law Enforcement Officials ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
The City

This essay examines detective fiction that takes New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina as setting and theme. It explores the ways in which stories told in novels and prime-time TV shows across the interlocking genres of police procedural and crime thriller have steered a sensationalist course through the recovery of the city over the last five years. It considers the role and representation of the New Orleans Police Department in particular, and of law enforcement officials more broadly, as post-Katrina protagonists who protect and serve the city, a rejoinder to media-made myths according to which they deserted their posts in the days after the storm. It closes with a case study of FOX TV's K-Ville, the first television series to depict New Orleans post-Katrina in a sustained way, and investigates the extent to which it was judged harshly for translating the disaster into a formulaic cop show. Deep-seated assumptions about genre, narrative form, the burden of representation and popular ideas about this particular locale inform the reception of these genre fictions.

Green Tourism and the Ambiguities of Sustainability Discourse

2019 ◽  
pp. 1572-1590
Author(s):  
Kevin Fox Gotham ◽  
Joshua A. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Spatial Inequalities ◽  
Tourism Sector ◽  
Green Tourism ◽  
Critical Understanding ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City

This paper uses a case study of the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood in New Orleans to examine the relationships between green tourism and sustainability discourse in shaping the post-Katrina rebuilding process. Specially, we draw on long-term ethnographic field observations to highlight the tensions between abstract and idealized conceptions of sustainability and the complicated realities of uneven rebuilding and neighborhood disinvestment. We focus on changes in the tourism sector since Hurricane Katrina, the promotion of green tourism through actor Brad Pitt's Make It Right (MIR) Foundation, and the ambiguities and paradoxes of sustainability discourse. Overall, our goal is to develop a critical understanding of niche tourism in a disaster-devastated neighborhood and highlight the ways in which unspoken norms about sustainability create political-economic blind-spots to the ways in which socio-spatial inequalities, disinvestment, and entrenched social problems structure life in the city and the Lower Ninth Ward.

Building resiliency and supporting distributive leadership post-disaster

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Usdin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Community Characteristics ◽  
Local Networks ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Community Resiliency ◽  
Post Disaster

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe leadership, decision making and other community characteristics that support community resiliency following disasters. Design/methodology/approach – Literature review and case study based on participant observation in nine years post-Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Findings – Effective leaders promote community resiliency using democratic, diffused decision making, stressing intra-dependence and promoting individual agency and locally-informed decisions. They build upon local networks and cultural bonds – not waiting for disaster but continuously, with flexible readiness framework infused in all efforts. Research limitations/implications – The paper uses New Orleans’ experiences following Hurricane Katrina to explore how leadership, decision making and other community characteristics can promote resiliency post-disaster – case study extrapolating from one disaster and relevant literature to understand role of leaders in community recovery/re-design. Practical implications – Changes in global economic and environmental conditions, population growth and urban migration challenge capacity of communities to thrive. Leadership and decision making are hub of wheel in crises, so understanding how leaders promote community resiliency is essential. Social implications – Disasters create breakdowns as functioning of all systems that maintain community are overwhelmed and increased demands exceed wounded capacity. Eventually, immediate struggle to limit impact gives way to longer process of re-designing key systems for improved functionality. What contributes to differing abilities of communities to reboot? How can we use understanding of what contributes to that differential ability to prepare and respond more effectively to disasters? Originality/value – Hurricane Katrina was a uniquely devastating urban event – causing re-design and re-building of every major system. Almost ten years post-hurricane, rebuilding process has provided key lessons about effective leadership and community resiliency post-disaster.

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