environment

Houston ranks as the sixth-worst U.S. city for traffic congestion in the Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s 2012 Urban Mobility Report, which includes a comprehensive database of traffic congestion, its effects on air quality and its costs to drivers in all 101 U.S. urban areas with populations above 500,000.

In the first large-scale study of its kind, Texas A&M researchers are investigating how storm forecast graphics, such as those depicting potential storm paths with cone-shaped regions of uncertainty, influence public decision making during hazard events.

The “Texas Grow! Eat! Go!” family gardening initiative is part of an obesity study headed by Judy Warren, a faculty fellow at the College of Architecture's Center for Health Systems & Design.

Students developed a software tool that can determine a building’s potential energy use from its design, as well as its rainwater harvesting potential and other characteristics as part of a fall 2012 graduate architecture class.

Last spring, Texas A&M graduate architecture students assisted sustainability specialists at Lake|Flato Architects with evaluating designs for a visitors’ center at Hardberger Park, a new 311-acre natural area in north San Antonio, for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.

Lower Rio Grande Valley officials will have help planning regional hurricane evacuations from a study undertaken by researchers at Texas A&M’s Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center in collaboration with the university's Colonias Program.

A federal study aimed at enhancing plant safety throughout the U.S. chemical manufacturing system benefitted from the work of Michael Lindell, a professor of urban planning at Texas A&M University who contributed sections on risk and decision analyses and emergency management.

Texas A&M urban planning professor Michael Lindell is part of an interdisciplinary team advising policymakers in earthquake-prone New Zealand on issues related to natural hazard mitigation, readiness, response and recovery.

Ranked as one of the fastest growing counties in the U.S., groundwater-dependent Montgomery County, Texas is confronted with a looming water crisis threatening future growth, according to a study by urban planners at Texas A&M University.

Researchers at Texas A&M's Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center are investigating why the proliferation of hazard mitigation planning by local governmental agencies in disaster prone regions along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts has not significantly reduced their vulnerability.