One of the long-standing debates in disaster science and practice is the tension between planning and structure on the one hand and flexibility and adaptation on the other in maximizing the effectiveness of response operations. This research aims to reconcile the divide that currently exists among scholars and practitioners and present a continuum that bridges the above models and ties planning, improvisation, and spontaneous planning together. The main questions that were examined with this research are: First, what role did spontaneous planning and improvisation play in responding to the two disasters. Second, in what ways do hazard characteristics (e.g. speed of onset and scope of impact) influence the roles played by spontaneous planning and improvisation? This is a qualitative study that employed a comparative case study to examine the characteristics of spontaneous planning. The major findings are that spontaneous planning does occur and that variables such as speed of onset, scope, magnitude, and number of organizations involved impact the visibility of spontaneous planning characteristics.

Over the past decade the movement of natural gas drilling operations toward more suburban and urban communities has created unique policy challenges for municipalities. Municipal response is manifest in a variety of institutional arrangements, some more enabling than others regarding citizen access to public hearings. This observation lead to the main research question, “How are variations in citizen participation affecting policy outcomes?” The argument is made that institutions affecting citizen participation, in turn affect policy outcomes. If the general public is given access to public hearings, their preferences for longer setbacks will be taken into account and the approved gas wells will have greater distances from neighboring residences – effectively providing for greater safety. Given the paucity of research on the topic of natural gas drilling, the research first begins with the presentation of a theoretical framework to allow for analysis of the highly complex topic of gas well permitting, emphasizing the rule-ordered relationships between the various levels of decision making and provides a typology of collective action arenas currently used by Texas municipalities. The research uses paired case studies of most similar design and employs a mixed methods process for the collection, analysis and interpretation of the municipal level …