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Recent Submissions

Rebuilding Trust in Fragile States: Lessons from Lebanon’s Disaster Governance Failures
(2025-10-15) Haddad Tania; Sakr Tracy; Department of Political Studies and Public Administration
Lebanon’s recent history has been characterized by recurring crises that have continually impeded its political, economic, and social recovery (Nasser et al,2024; Haddad,2024) The latest surge round of hostilities with Israel has once again devastated the country’s infrastructure and communities, worsening an already fragile situation with estimated $1 billion infrastructure damage and $4.6 billion damage in the housing sector (The World Bank. 2025). As the Lebanese government faces the challenge of rebuilding and restoring, it is essential to reflect on past reconstruction efforts, especially after the civil war, the 2006 conflict, and the Beirut port explosion. This paper revisits and expands on previous analyses of the relationship between state and non-state actors in Lebanon’s disaster response and recovery, particularly the work by Haddad (2020) and Haddad & Sakr (2022) on interorganizational dynamics. Their work revealed both the potential and the limits of collaborative governance in contexts marked by political fragmentation and institutional distrust. It also underscored the importance of three key dimensions in interorganizational response: (1) structural coordination mechanisms, (2) role clarity, and (3) trust among actors. By revisiting the case of the Beirut Port explosion and situating it within a broader comparative and conceptual framework, this paper examines the evolving patterns of interorganizational collaboration in crisis response and reconstruction. It assesses how lessons from Lebanon’s experience might inform more effective, trust-based, and sustainable disaster governance frameworks. The paper is divided into three parts: Part One revisits the primary literature on disaster response in fragile contexts; Part Two reviews key insights from prior research on Lebanon’s disaster response networks; and Part three offers conclusions and recommendations for strengthening interorganizational relations in contexts of fragility.
Wellpad and Manifold Design with Collision Risk Considerations in Field Development Planning
El Sehayl, Roba; 202472213; Ghorayeb, Kassem; Ahmad, Mohamad; Maalouf, Elsa; ME; Baha and Walid Bassatne Department of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Energy; Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture
Field Development planning (FDP) of oil and gas fields is a multifaceted, challenging process due to the numerous decision variables involved. This process is further complicated by the environmental concerns, regulatory requirements, directional drilling, congested high-density fields, and various constraints, including design, spatial, operational, and cost. Additionally, onshore and offshore operations differ in terms of complexity and key components. These factors highlight the need for safe, optimal, environmentally conscious, and scalable planning. This research aims to reduce the complexity of FDP by addressing both onshore and offshore settings and focusing on critical components. Onshore planning tackles detection of prohibited drilling areas, multi-well pad design with brownfield considerations, and anti-collision analysis with mitigations strategies. On the other hand, offshore planning addresses manifold and jumper design, among other complexities. To ensure safe well placement, this research begins with the identification of prohibited drilling areas. U-Net deep learning architecture is employed to identify existing well pads as a baseline step toward the broader objective. Subsequently, multi-well pads are designed to minimize land use and increase operational efficiency and safety, especially with rise in directional drilling. The methodology identifies key well pad design parameters such as well spacing and orientation angle through analysis of various fields including but not limited to Marcellus Shale and Lower Eagle Ford Shale. To maintain wellbore integrity and safe drilling, anti-collision analysis is assessed. This analysis covers coordinate reference system, the International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF), error model, ellipsoid of uncertainty, scanning method, directional uncertainty method, and separation factor formula. Additionally, collision mitigation strategies are proposed focusing on adjusting well pad parameters to minimize or eliminate collision risks during the planning process. Detection of prohibited areas is evaluated using quantitative and visual analysis. The model converges to a combined loss (Dice loss + Binary Cross entropy) of 0.1 and demonstrates good generalization for unseen images in familiar fields, but it fails to generalize to completely new geographic regions. The onshore results section for multi-well pad design and anti-collision analysis is divided into three parts which are a case study, evaluation of different configurations, and scalability analysis. The case study presents a detailed step-by-step process of multi-well pad design and anti-collision analysis. Furthermore, collision mitigation and brownfield scenario are incorporated demonstrating the adaptability of the design. The comparative analysis highlights the flexibility of the design and the impact of varying the well pad parameters on anti-collision analysis results, emphasizing the importance of selecting appropriate configurations. The scalability analysis confirms the efficiency of the workflow and its applicability to large fields. In offshore planning, a structured and scalable methodology for subsea manifold design is presented, addressing numerous challenges including well arrangement, optimal manifold type selection and placement, manifold-to-pipeline connections, and jumper routing. The proposed methodology integrates various design variables, including pipeline type, jumper type and length, number of connected wells, and layout configurations. It places special focus on cluster manifold design and practical jumper routing. For distributed subsea layout, the jumper paths are generated using A* algorithm, with a repulsion model applied to resolve collisions. For flexible jumpers, a minimum bending radius is enforced to ensure design feasibility. The approach is validated through examples, including a clustered subsea layout, a distributed subsea layout, and a layout featuring well satellites. Each case highlights its adaptability under different variables and architecture. Results showcase its effectiveness, as it minimizes rework and manual intervention. Additionally, it accounts for multiple constraints and automates key design steps enabling faster and more informed decision-making, which is critical to maintain speed, scalability, and operational feasibility. Overall, this research presents comprehensive methodology for onshore and offshore FDP aiming to provide scalable and efficient processes that consider the broader context, interrelated constraints, and environmental concerns.
Digital Transparency Deficit: Assessing Online Accountability Practices of Lebanese NGOs
(2024) Haddad Tania N.; Department of Political Studies and Public Administration
The internet has become a key tool for nonprofit transparency, especially in contexts where formal regulatory oversight is weak. This paper explores how nonprofit associations in Lebanon use their websites to communicate transparency and demonstrate accountability. Through an exploratory content analysis of 196 active websites, the study assesses whether Lebanese associations disclose information about their mission, governance, finances, and stakeholder engagement. The results show that while most associations provide basic descriptive details and maintain online communication channels, they rarely publish financial statements, governance documents, or performance reviews. This limited online transparency reflects both structural constraints, like an outdated legal framework and fragmented donor requirements, and organizational choices. The paper underscores the implications of these gaps and offers recommendations to enhance digital transparency and strengthen accountability practices among Lebanese NGOs.
The History, Causes and Politics of Armenian Terrorism from 1975 until 1986: A Critical View
(Maghreb Publications, 2025-02-03) Geukjian, Ohannes; Department of Political Studies and Public Administration; American University of Beirut
This article examines and analyzes the history, causes, politics of a decade of Armenian terrorism from 1975 to 1986. We argue that the main aim of Armenian terrorism was to publicize the Armenian cause and bring to the attention of the international community that the Armenian genocide, which was committed by the Ottoman Empire in 1915, should be recognized by Turkey. We provide a detailed examination of both ASALA (Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia) and JCAG (Justice Commandos for the Armenian Genocide), the military wing of the Armenian Revolutionary Party (ARF). We also examine how both groups grew in the Middle East, Lebanon, and carried transnational actions, their policies, organization, and strategies. Our analysis is based on in-depth historical research relying on primary sources and oral history methods. We also provide a comprehensive analysis how both groups blossomed and the processes that led to their demise.
A Theoretical Performance Analysis Framework for Data Detection in the Terahertz Band
Enad, Almutasem Bellah; 202480918; Sarieddeen, Hadi; Fahs, Jihad; Abou Faycal, Ibrahim; Al-Naffouri, Tareq; ME; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture
Future wireless systems, particularly those operating in the terahertz (THz) band, require accurate channel modeling and analysis that move beyond classical assumptions of idealized fading and independent channel and noise. This thesis develops a unified analytical framework for evaluating the symbol error performance of THz-band linear detectors under realistic channel–noise dependencies and diverse fading conditions. The analysis spans Rayleigh, α - μ, and mixture–gamma (MG) channels, capturing both indoor and outdoor THz propagation environments. New semi-analytical, asymptotic, and approximation-based expressions are derived for zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean-square error (MMSE) detection, accounting for the bias and noise enhancement effects inherent to each scheme. The thesis also presents exact and approximate diversity analyses for maximum-ratio combining (MRC) in THz systems. Extensive simulations confirm the accuracy of the proposed framework. Overall, this work provides a comprehensive and tractable foundation for analyzing and optimizing next-generation THz communication links.