The threat of global climate change to the world’s water resources has jeopardized access to clean drinking water across the world and continues to devastate biodiversity and natural life globally. South Africa operates as a useful case study to understand and analyze the effectiveness of public policy responses to the perils of climate change on issues of water access and ecosystem preservation. After the new South African Constitution was enacted in 1997, protecting water resources and ensuring their equitable distribution across the nation’s population was a paramount goal of the young democratic government. The National Water Act was passed in 1998, nationalizing the country’s water infrastructure and putting in place programs seeking to ensure equitable distributive and environmental outcomes. Thus far, it has failed. Access to South Africa’s water resources is as stratified as access to its economy; its aquatic ecosystems remain in grave danger; and many of the same problems of South Africa’s Apartheid era still plague its efforts to create an equitable water system. Decision-making power continues to be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, at the expense of historically marginalized groups, whose voices are still not adequately heard. Corporate actors still exert undue influence over legislative policy that favors economic growth over environmental sustainability. The looming threat of climate change is exponentially increasing the chances of disasters like Cape Town’s 2018 feared ‘Day Zero’. The National Water Act’s noble intentions were never actualized, and therefore the people of South Africa remain in serious danger of acute and chronic threats to their water supply.

Brundtland’s definition of sustainability is the ability to “meet the needs of the present<br/>without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs” (IISD, 2021). But<br/>what if there are no future generations? Social sustainability, the sector of sustainability that<br/>foregrounds the well-being and livelihoods of people (and thereby continuation of humanity), is<br/>included in definitions within the sustainability field, but less developed in sustainability<br/>practice. In an effort to bridge this gap of knowledge, 14 U.S. cities and over 100 sustainability<br/>policies were analyzed for their social sustainability performance. An eight-item analytical<br/>framework that deals with differing areas of social equity guided the analysis. Results found that<br/>most cities’ sustainability departments fell short of truly addressing social sustainability<br/>concerns. Out of the eight items, the most frequently addressed were housing security and racial<br/>and gender equality whereas few, if any, cities addressed the more specific social concerns of<br/>immigration, technology and media, or arts/cultural preservation. Future research is<br/>recommended to gain a better understanding of the ways existing cities can improve in this area.

This thesis will bring together students to engage in entrepreneurship by finding, measuring and sharing strategic market opportunities. From a student’s perspective, it will take a deep dive into the world of startup ecosystems, markets and trends utilizing both qualitative and quantitative market research techniques. The information gathered has been curated into a productive, meaningful manner, through a report titled “The State of Startups: A Student Perspective.” <br/> The first key theme of this thesis is that market intelligence can be a powerful tool. The second key theme is the power of knowledge implementation towards competitive strategies. The first section of the thesis will focus on identifying and understanding the current “startup” landscape as a basis on which to build strategic and impactful business decisions. This will be accomplished as the team conducts a landscape analysis focused on the student perspective of the student-based North American “entrepreneurial” ecosystem. The second section of the thesis will focus specifically on the personal experiences of student startup founders. This will be accomplished through the analysis of interviews with founders of the startups researched from the first section of the thesis. This will provide us with a direct insight into the student perspective of the student-based North American “entrepreneurial” ecosystem.

The contemporary world is motivated by data-driven decision-making. Small 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations are often limited in their reach due to their size, lack of funding, and a lack of data analysis expertise. In an effort to increase accessibility to data analysis for such organizations, a Founders Lab team designed a product to help them understand and utilize geographic information systems (GIS) software. This product – You Got GIS – strikes the balance between highly technical documentation and general overviews, benefiting 501(c)3 nonprofits in their pursuit of data-driven decision-making. Through the product’s use of case studies and methodologies, You Got GIS serves as a thought experiment platform to start answering questions regarding GIS. The product aims to continuously build partnerships in an effort to improve curriculum and user engagement.

Esports is a rapidly growing virtual competitive space that is projected to surpass physical sports in the near future. Given that Esports is considered to be in its infancy, it has only been recently introduced at the high school level. Our group connected with local high school Esports teams in order to evaluate its efficiency. We found that players at this level are lacking a connection to other competitive teams and consistent practice. In the Esports world, practice with another team of equal level is called a “scrim”. In an effort to combat this issue, we created a platform named Clear Scrims to connect high school and collegiate Esport teams across the country with other teams of equivalent level. This platform will allow individuals to sign up, register with their competitive team, and provide available times to scrim. The platform then would be able to use their self-reported ingame rank to match them with worthy opponents for the most quality scrim experience. Teams playing into the growing sector of Esports need a structure like Clear Scrims to increase skill level and communication. In addition, our platform has a review component where teams and individuals score their opponent to see if they played as advertised. This component will help specify our matchmaking program but also work to dismantle the culture of bad manners or toxicity in Esports. Our site, Clear Scrims, will engender more competition and thus more opportunities for players to practice and hone in their skills.

Over the past several decades, the incarceration rates have continued to rise in the United States with seemingly no end in sight. Many of the prisons within America are experiencing major overcrowding of incarcerated persons in addition to an ever expanding budget that seems impossible to adhere to. Qualitative and quantitative studies conclude that preventative and post release programs reduce crime rates and recidivism which saves taxpayer dollars. This paper addresses how much prisons cost, why this is important to the taxpayer, and possible solutions to make the penal system more efficient.

This thesis project has been conducted in accordance with The Founder’s Lab initiative which is sponsored by the W. P. Carey School of Business. This program groups three students together and tasks them with creating a business idea, conducting the necessary research to bring the concept to life, and exploring different aspects of business, with the end goal of gaining traction. The product we were given to work through this process with was Hot Head, an engineering capstone project concept. The Hot Head product is a sustainable and innovative solution to the water waste issue we find is very prominent in the United States. In order to bring the Hot Head idea to life, we were tasked with doing research on topics ranging from the Hot Head life cycle to finding plausible personas who may have an interest in the Hot Head product. This paper outlines the journey to gaining traction via a marketing campaign and exposure of our brand on several platforms, with a specific interest in website traffic. Our research scope comes from mainly primary sources like gathering opinions of potential buyers by sending out surveys and hosting focus groups. The paper concludes with some possible future steps that could be taken if this project were to be continued.

As temperatures increase across the United States, some populations are more at risk for heat-related death and illness than others. One of these at-risk demographics is mobile home and trailer park inhabitants, who are disproportionately represented among indoor heat-related deaths (Solís, “Heat, Health”). In this paper, we outline a cost-benefit analysis that was used to calculate the net present economic value of projects related to reducing heat burden on mobile home owners and parks in Maricopa County. We use this model to assess solutions developed by student teams under the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience’s Summer Heat Resilience Challenge. We find that one of the seven solutions has a positive net present value (NPV) even in the lowest effectiveness (10%), while three more solutions have a positive NPV in the mid-level (50%) effectiveness scenario, showcasing their economic viability.

This thesis will bring together students to engage in entrepreneurship by finding, measuring and sharing strategic market opportunities. From a student’s perspective, it will take a deep dive into the world of startup ecosystems, markets and trends utilizing both qualitative and quantitative market research techniques. The information gathered has been curated into a productive, meaningful manner, through a report titled “The State of Startups: A Student Perspective.” <br/> The first key theme of this thesis is that market intelligence can be a powerful tool. The second key theme is the power of knowledge implementation towards competitive strategies. The first section of the thesis will focus on identifying and understanding the current “startup” landscape as a basis on which to build strategic and impactful business decisions. This will be accomplished as the team conducts a landscape analysis focused on the student perspective of the student-based North American “entrepreneurial” ecosystem. The second section of the thesis will focus specifically on the personal experiences of student startup founders. This will be accomplished through the analysis of interviews with founders of the startups researched from the first section of the thesis. This will provide us with a direct insight into the student perspective of the student-based North American “entrepreneurial” ecosystem.

Have new fraud and earnings manipulation detecting tools improved confidence in capital markets? To answer this question, I will provide a survey of tools currently used to detect fraud and earnings manipulation, discuss the effects of fraud and earnings manipulation, and look at changes in historical records of consumer confidence and investment returns as a test to our question.