Abstract: With increasing disasters provoking increasing damage along the world, damage data collection has become a raising concern as the basis to determine the effectivity of risk management strategies. However present methodologies for damage data collection and recording after a disaster, as well as the uses given to these data, differ along countries, creating inconsistencies. In such a context, this thesis focuses on the feasibility of using damage data obtained with current methodologies for collection and recording for a specific use that is disaster forensic investigation. A literature review was performed to de?ne the different requirements of damage data for each of their four applications: loss accounting, risk modelling, disaster forensic analysis and compensation. Special attention was given to disaster forensic analysis given its utility to supply a post-event comprehensive overview of the disaster. Through literature review it was also possible to describe the current practices for damage data collection and recording in Europe and specifically in Italy. This let to the identification of key challenges for the use of damage data for a different application than its original purpose. The November 2013-February 2014 flood in the Umbria region was chosen as the case study to perform a disaster forensic analysis with data collected with current practices in Italy, which are compensation oriented. As a result, it was possible to identify overlapping characteristics of data for compensation and disaster forensics applications. Moreover, a second set of specific challenges for the use of data was set, like: dealing with uncertainty leading to low quality of data in a smarter way, improving standards, having a more coherent way to account for the change of data on time, decreasing the time needed for data elaboration. Future developments on this field are encouraged to address these challenges. This will also set a step forward towards compatible methods for the collection of loss data worldwide that eventually can lead to European or global structured databases. Resumen: Con los incrementados desastres que provocan incrementados daños en todo el mundo, la colección de datos de daño se ha convertido en una elevada preocupación como la base para determinar la efectividad de estrategias para la gestión del riesgo. Sin embargo, las metodologías presentes para la colección y registro de datos de daño después de un desastre, al igual que los usos dados a estos datos, difieren de país a país, creando inconsistencias. En ese contexto, esta tesis se concentra en la factibilidad de usar datos de daño obtenidos con las metodologías presentes para la colección y registro en el uso específico de investigación forense de desastres. Una revisión bibliográfica fue realizada para determinar los diferentes requisitos de los datos de daño para cada una de las cuatro aplicaciones: Contabilidad de perdidas, modelo de riesgos, análisis forense de desastres y compensación. Especial atención se dio al análisis forense de desastres por su utilidad para suministrar un panorama general del desastre. A través de la revisión bibliográfica también fe posible describir las practicas actuales para la colección y registro de datos de daño en Europa y específicamente en Italia. Esto llevo a la identificación de desafíos clave para el uso de datos de daño para una aplicación diferente que la de su propósito original. La inundación en la región de Umbria de Noviembre 2013- Febrero 2014 fue seleccionada como el caso estudio para realizar un análisis forense de desastre con daros recolectados con las actuales prácticas para Italia, que son orientadas hacia la compensación. Como resultado, fue posible identificar las características comunes de los datos para las aplicaciones de compensación y análisis forense de desastres. Además, un segundo conjunto de desafíos para el uso de datos fue establecido, como: Lidiar con la incertidumbre que lleva a baja calidad de datos en una manera más inteligente; mejorar los estándares; tener una manera más coherente de tener en cuenta el cambio del dato en el tiempo; reducir el tiempo necesario para la elaboración de datos. Futuros desarrollos en este campo son incentivados a dirigirse hacia estos desafíos. Esto permitirá establecer un paso adelante hacia métodos de colección de daros de daño compatible en todo el mundo que eventualmente puedan conducir a bases de datos estructuradas a nivel Europeo o Global.

Abstract: Since 2012 peace negotiations between the Colombian government and FARC have been taking place, with the objective of achieving a “stable and lasting peace” for Colombia. In parallel, the Colombian Ministry of Defence has been working on how to reform its security forces to transform the Colombian Military into a “military force of the post-conflict” that can effectively fulfil its constitutional mandate after peace is signed with FARC. The main argument of this paper is that the COLMIL must commit to both traditional and statebuilding roles in its reforms in order to effectively contribute to peace. This paper finds that because of the institutional strength of the COLMIL, it is in a privileged position to perform in the statebuilding role. It further finds that after signing peace with FARC the country will enter a Hybrid Post-conflict Environment, in which COLMIL must maintain current capabilities and adapt to the new threats it will face. Resumen: Desde el 2012 se han estado llevando a cabo negociaciones de paz entre el gobierno Colombiano y las FARC, con el objetivo de lograr una “paz estable y duradera” para Colombia. En paralelo, el Ministerio de Defensa Nacional ha estado trabajando en como reformar su sector de seguridad para transformas a las Fuerzas Militares de Colombia en una “fuerza militar para el posconflicto” que pueda cumplir de manera efectiva su mandato constitucional luego de que se firme la paz con las FARC. El argumento principal de este escrito es que las FFMM deben comprometerse a incluir tanto el rol tradicional como el rol de construcción de Estado en sus reformas para así poder contribuir de manera efectiva a la paz. Esta investigación encuentra que debido a la fortaleza institucional de las FFMM, esta se encuentra en una posición privilegiada para desarrollar el rol de construcción de Estado. Igualmente encuentra que, luego de firmarse la paz con las FARC, el país entrará a un ambiente de posconflicto híbrido, durante el cual las FFMM deberán mantener sus capacidades actuales y al tiempo adaptarse a las nuevas amenazas que enfrentará.

Abstract: The extraction of natural resources has been one of the main sources of income and economic development in Colombia in the last twenty years. Such activity has been developed in a territory characterized by a pre-existing armed conflict that has lasted for more than five decades. This complex situation has accentuated violent struggles concerning the control and access to natural resources, which in turn has become the main source of income and a strategic priority for all Colombia´s armed groups, including the military and external actors such as international private security companies. By drawing on a historically situated dialectical analysis of structure-agency this research highlights the lacunas of scholarly treatment on the issue and addresses the question of to what extent resource extraction should be understood as a mean for economic development and mitigation of armed conflicto or whether it configures the production and reproduction of violence in Colombia. This study argues that the extraction of natural resources in a geographical territory characterized by a pre-existing armed conflict, specifically the Colombian case, contributes to the maintenance of the internal warfare. The argument will be illustrated by situating the contextual background of the case, examining the theories that explain the relationship between natural resource extraction and armed conflict, and presenting an analysis of historical structures and social action over time elucidating the role of natural resources in the production and reproduction of violence. Resumen: La extracción de recursos naturales ha sido una de las principales fuentes de ingresos y desarrollo económico en Colombia durante los últimos veinte años. El extractivismo se desarrolló en un territorio caracterizado por la existencia de un conflicto armado, que ha durado más de cinco décadas. Esta situación compleja ha acentuado las luchas violentas relacionadas con el control y acceso a los recursos naturales, que a su vez se ha convertido en la principal fuente de ingresos y una prioridad estratégica para todos los grupos armados de Colombia, incluidas las Fuerzas Armadas y actores externos como las empresas internacionales de seguridad privada. A través de un análisis dialéctico de estructura y agencia, esta investigación destaca los vacíos del tratamiento académico sobre el tema y aborda la pregunta de hasta qué punto la extracción de recursos debe entenderse como un medio para el desarrollo económico y la mitigación del conflicto armado o si configura la producción y reproducción de la violencia en Colombia. Este estudio argumenta que la extracción de recursos naturales en un territorio caracterizado por el conflicto armado contribuye al mantenimiento de la guerra interna. El argumento se ilustrará a través del caso del extractivismo en Colombia, examinando las teorías que explican la relación entre la extracción de recursos naturales y el conflicto armado, y presentando un análisis de las estructuras históricas y la acción colectiva social a lo largo del tiempo dilucidando el papel de la extracción de recursos naturales en la producción y reproducción de la violencia.

Operational and commercial optimization for monitoring and sensoring ions in water is a challenging task for the current scientific and industrial world. For resolving this issue sensor could help identify new viable water sources that can mitigate today's global water crisis. The current water crisis primarily correlates to the increasing water demand due to burgeoning population, accelerated industrialization and urbanization. The about six-fold increase in water consumption with a corresponding three-fold increase in global population was recorded in the past century Gude, 2015) This is a clear indicator of potential and adverse water stress conditions. A statistic predicts over 33 countries are liable to face acute water stress by 2040, which calls for rapid action for efficient crisis management. On the other hand, companies related to the food, water treatment, and pharmaceutical fields are facing technological challenges to ensure the purity of their water sources. Reuse of water in production processes can reduce costs allowing manufacturers to be competitive. One of the main issues for reusing the water is the lack of fast and reliable sensoring devices for the characterization of the water. Another is the long response time of conventional tests. This requires sensoring technologies that can eliminate these obstacles and that can identify a potential risk of reusing contaminated water. This research focuses on the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI); a technique to identify and quantify ions in drinking water based on optical interferometric measurements. The refractive index identifies which component is present in an analyzed sample. The visibility term involves a concentration parameter that allows quantifying the component present. This two-term were simulated in a MATLAB algorithm based on a fitting method between the generated interferometric spectral signal from the MZ and a model based on theoretical MZI equations. The use of this fitting model can give valuable insights for further applications of water sensoring technologies such as an optofluidic chip, a promising technology for identification and quantification of ions in drinking water.

This paper investigates strategies that have been used in companies from different countries to alleviate the impact of extortion from armed groups in businesses, especially in construction companies. Based on these experiences a risk management decision-making criterion will be outlined, resulting on broad recommendations to assist local small and medium size companies in the decision-making process when dealing with an incident of extortion. At the end, a list of potential recommendations is highlighted to assist companies in this process. The methodology for this thesis is based on desk-top research, literature review taken from companies’ websites, NGO’s websites, states reports, journal articles, statistics and relevant cases studies from companies dealing with extortion. The outcome of this investigation would be a decision-making criterion and a list of recommendations that companies could use to mitigate or avoid extortions in Colombia.

The nineteenth century was a period of great change for most Latin American nations, which gained independence from a decaying Spanish Empire and saw their birth as republics and engaged in a process of social, political and economic change in the construction of a national identity. In this process, the work of artists and writers was of particular importance, as it was meant to spread around the newborn republics the invented traditions and cultural imaginary upon which a strictly gendered idea of nationhood was to be founded. Negotiating between traditional/colonial and progressive/republican values, writers and artists created a gendered notion of the “ideal Colombian” through their works, and relegated the Colombian woman to the domestic field, the ideal of womanhood being one of pure and submissive virginity. Although such works highlighted certain characteristics of personality, they also emphasized the importance of appearances, of manners, and of fashion/dress. This thesis focuses on the portrayal of femininity through dress: it studies the construction of the ideal Colombian woman through the clothes she wears in two novels, Jorge Isaacs’ María (1867) and Eugenio Díaz Castro’s Manuela (1858), and the watercolors produced by Carmelo Fernández, Henry Price, and Manuel María Paz for the Comisión Corográfica, this work identifies the different ways in which the specific characteristics of the ideal Colombian woman of the nineteenth century are portrayed through dress, as well as the potential opportunities for the subversion of such ideals and the creation of alternative forms of femininity.

Abstract: Thesis project exploring how to connect political bordering urban systems through the natural structure for a coherent occupation between the built environment, ecosystems and resources following the Landscape Architecture lens that can address different scale systems simultaneously to create a holistic approach between them. And the proposition of a new type of landscape of this threshold territory as its own kind. Specifically looking at the bordering cities in the heart of the Amazon Region in South America that fall between Colombia, Brazil and Peru. Focusing specially in issues that affect the population and the environment such as flooding and lack of potable water in one of the most humid place on earth and with more rain per year. Making landscape architecture infrastructure. It looks to create a system that weaves the political boundaries based on the natural structure and ecological processes for the benefit of the people as well of the health of the environment through the Landscape Architecture approach that is about system thinking problem solving in physical territories which includes people, the built environment, the natural environment, ecological processes, design, community participation and productive development. This lens is taken and applied to this unique place to create cohesion in the South American region. *Landscape: as the container of everything including the built environment, human behaviors and dynamics, ecological processes and ecosystems.Resumen: Tesis de grado que busca explorar, el conectar fronteras políticas usando la estructura natural y procesos ecológicos para el beneficio de la población y del medioambiente, desde el punto de vista del Paisajismo o Landscape Architecture que usa el pensamiento sistémico incluyendo el desarrollo del ser humano, el entorno construido, el medio ambiente, los procesos ecológicos, el diseño y el Desarrollo productivo. Todo esto para consolidar los asentamientos fronterizos y el desarrollo de la región Latinoamericana. Tomando, específicamente, la frontera tri-nacional Amazónica entre Colombia, Perú y Brasil (Leticia, Santa Rosa y Tabatinga) como ejemplo donde se enfrentan problemáticas contradictorias como la falta de agua potable e inundaciones periódicas (entre otros aspectos) a pesar de ser uno de los lugares más húmedos y que recibe más agua lluvia en el planeta El segundo propósito de este trabajo de investigación es presentar estos lugares fronterizos, como su propio tipo de paisaje y con dinámicas muy diferentes a lugares donde sólo hay una jurisdicción, y cómo tienen que haber estrategias específicas para estos casos. *Paisaje: el entorno contenedor de todo incluyendo el hecho construido, las dinámicas del ser humano (desarrollo, políticas, etc), los procesos ecológicos, los ecosistemas.

With the combination of intensive and extensive methods in accordance with the critical realism approach, this case study constitutes an attempt to reveal the generative mechanisms involved when procuring the two promises of the Diploma Programme: as pathway to higher or tertiary education and its subsequent success during further university studies. These generative mechanisms are not observable in the empirical domain, but reachable in the real and actual domain. In this sense, the IB candidates possesses casual powers derived from the Diploma Programme that can remain unexercised or are actualized during the interaction with other entities, in this case the application to university and the consequent further university studies. Sixteen questionnaires and interviews were developed to unveil what mechanisms come at work during these two phases. Participants involved in the case study were pupils undertaking the Diploma Programme in order to see how this is being conceived and consumed, teachers to gain deeper perspective of this curriculum and finally IB graduates enrolled at least in one university course to complement and obtain rich insights about these causal powers. A qualitative analysis of both methods was carried out to identify demi regularities in the questionnaires and recurrent themes in the interviews to confirm and broaden the former ones. The case study concludes revealing and highlighting those most important elements that comprise the rationale of this curriculum choice in relation to the pursuit of university admission process and success during the experience of further university studies.

Abstract: The research dissertation “Can Tourism School Enterprises build Social Capital to enhance people’s livelihoods?” carried out and submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the MSc. in Development Administration and Planning at the Development Planning Unit - University College London. The paper analyses the construction of social capital through vocational high school education and training, specifically in tourism school enterprises. The objective of the research was to understand how tourism school enterprises can help communities to engage with other actors in the spheres of the state, market and civil society to access, defend and transform assets for individual and collective benefit. For this purpose, the paper elaborates on social capital as an analytical tool, developing a specific framework to assess the construction of social capital in tourism school enterprises. Base on this framework, there are two case studies presented, one in Ecuador and other in Guatemala. In these case studies, tourism school enterprises have been established and work with local communities in rainforest areas of Latin America. Resumen: El proyecto de investigación “Pueden las Escuelas-empresa de Turismo, construir Capital Social para mejorar la calidad de vida de las personas?” fue presentado en cumplimiento de los requerimientos para obtener el título de MSc. in Development Administration and Planning de la Development Planning Unit de University College London. El proyecto de investigación analiza la construcción del capital social a través de la educación superior vocacional y de entrenamiento, específicamente en las escuelas-empresa de turismo. El objetivo de la investigación fue el entender como las escuelas-empresa de turismo pueden ayudar a las comunidades para relacionarse con otros actores en las esferas del estado, el mercado y la sociedad civil para acceder, defender y transformar recursos para el beneficio individual y colectivo. Para este propósito, la investigación elabora en el capital social como herramienta analítica, desarrollando un marco específico para evaluar la construcción de capital social en las escuelas-empresa de turismo. Basado en este marco analítico, se presentan dos casos de estudio, uno en Ecuador y otro en Guatemala. En estos casos, las escuelas-empresa de turismo han sido establecidas y trabajan con comunidades locales en áreas selváticas de Latinoamérica.

Abstract: This thesis intends to explain the change of strategies to address coca plantation in Colombia before and after the 2016 Peace agreement. To do so, I build a theoretical model that draws on securitization/de-securitization theory and ripeness/readiness theories. The former theory is used to explain what kind of change was there between the different strategies. In this sense, I claim that policies to address coca plantation before 2016 Peace agreement, securitized coca and framed it as a vital threat, something that ought to be eliminated. On the other hand, the Substitution program of the Peace agreement is, I claim, an attempt to de-securitize -move back to the realm of politics- the issue of coca plantation. The latter theory is used to explain this change and address the characteristics of the ready/ripe moment that made possible the peace negotiations and the change of strategies regarding coca plantation. More specifically, the analysis centres on the changing of disputants’ aspirations to end the conflict and the changing perceptions of each other. I claim that this change of perception of ‘the Other’ is fundamental to de-securitize an issue in a conflict. As a result, the attempt to de-securitize coca in a context of conflict like the Colombian is done through reconsidering the perception of ‘the Other’, the former enemy. Resumen: Esta tesis trata de explicar el cambio de estrategias para abordar la plantación de coca en Colombia antes y después del Acuerdo de paz de 2016. Para hacerlo, construyo un modelo teórico que se basa en la teoría de la securitización / de-securitización y las teorías de madurez/ preparación. La teoría de la securitización / de-securitización se usa para explicar qué tipo de cambio hubo entre las diferentes estrategias. En este sentido, afirmo que las políticas para abordar la plantación de coca antes del Acuerdo de paz de 2016, securitizaron la coca y la enmarcaron como una amenaza vital, algo que debería ser eliminado. Por otro lado, el programa de Sustitución del Acuerdo de paz es un intento por de-securitizar -traer al ámbito de la política- el tema de la plantación de coca. Las teorías de madurez/ preparación se usan para explicar este cambio de estrategias y abordar las características del momento preparado/ maduro que hizo posible las negociaciones de paz y el cambio de estrategias con respecto a la plantación de coca. Más específicamente, el análisis se centra en el cambio de las aspiraciones de los contendientes a terminar con el conflicto y en el cambio de las percepciones que los contendientes tenían del otro. Afirmo que este cambio de percepción de 'el Otro' es fundamental para de-securitizar un problema en un conflicto. Como resultado, el intento de de-securitizar la coca en un contexto de conflicto como el colombiano se hace reconsiderando la percepción de 'el Otro', el antiguo enemigo.