Recurring extreme events of nature challenge disaster-prone settlements in complex ways. Devastating property damages are one of the tests of survival for such settlements in both economic and social terms. It also provides unique opportunities to rethink the environment cleared by massive natural disasters. However, rebuilding for long-term resiliency is one of the least investigated areas, particularly when employing tacit knowledge in the sustainable recovery process. This book builds a discursive field around the post-disaster rebuilding of Bolivar Peninsula aftermath Hurricane Ike to demonstrate reciprocity between disaster absorptive ecological formations such as barrier islands and their exploitative human occupation. In the process, it investigates the nexus between connectivity among open space networks to various levels of surge damage among Bolivar spontaneous settlements. Beyond scientific analyses, the Hurricane Ike study triangulates syntactical methods with structured observations and statistical analyses to offer a holistic reporting model for emerging scholars and independent investigators, which one may find quite absent in the mainstream disaster studies and journalism.

Many new entrants to higher education, including employees and job seekers, consider micro-credentialing as time-wise alternatives to traditional degrees. These short online or physical courses are more accessible and allow the learner to quickly acquire skills-in-demand and associated knowledge and then re-deploy themselves into industry. Although micro-credentials paybacks are enormous, as they demonstrate skills, knowledge, and/or experience in a given subject area or capability, it has yet to be fully mapped within the credentialing ecosystem. So far, there has been limited research on multidisciplinary micro-credentialing and its benefits to both higher education and industry. Introducing Multidisciplinary Micro-credentialing establishes a HE-industry framework to augment a re-skilling and upskilling process where courses could generate adaptable multidisciplinary links and intersections toward self-sufficiency. Subasinghe and Giridharan offer in-depth discourse analysis on self-sufficiency-related benefits that could forge robust academia-industry partnerships to establish fluidity between different credentialing models and job sectors.