Research

A model that health experts commonly use to predict coronavirus fatality rates has a narrower gap between predicted coronavirus cases and actual cases after it’s modified with tweaks created by John Nichols, associate professor of construction science, who has decades of experience as a statistical analyst.

After a natural disaster, private aid groups spring into action, helping Americans recover from tornadoes, floods and other calamities. But could these groups help long-term, post-disaster housing recovery more effectively?

Two College of Architecture faculty members, Hope Hui Rising and Andrea Roberts, earned prestigious fellowships from Texas A&M University’s Arts & Humanities Fellowship Program, announced by Research at Texas A&M today.

Real progress is being made by Texas A&M urban planning faculty to help communities better prepare for and recover from natural disasters.

Buildings may one day “breathe,” and be able to function in their own environment with the help of a type of “smart skin” developed by a team of Texas A&M University researchers.

Despite an ever-rising number of pedestrian and bicyclist deaths on U.S. roads each year, there’s no widespread public pressure to improve road safety — a situation influenced by how news articles about crashes are written, said Tara Goddard, assistant professor of urban planning.

Some community parks are square, a reflection of the city block where they’re located, but irregularly shaped parks reduce the mortality risk of residents who live near them, concluded a study by Huaquing Wang, a Ph.D. Urban and Regional Sciences student and Lou Tassinary, professor of visualization.

In the future, as the projected limits of human exploration extend beyond the moon to Mars and even further destinations, some workplaces will be in deep space with low- and no-gravity environments. How can workers be trained for extreme environments in a safe, cost-effective manner?

Uneven walking surfaces, incomplete sidewalks, and broken steps are small matters to most pedestrians — but to the elderly, they can be major barriers that have a significant, negative impact on their overall health, said Chanam Lee, professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning.

The great variety of research and creative work by Texas A&M College of Architecture faculty and Ph.D. students was on full display at “Natural, Built, Virtual,” the college’s annual research symposium, Sept 16, 2019 at the university’s Langford Architecture Center.

Leading campus disaster recovery and hazard scholars will explore recent and ongoing research on Hurricane Harvey and disaster resilience at Resilience Rising: Research and Practice on Harvey and Hazards of the Future Sept. 5-6 at Texas A&M’s Rudder Tower.

In a paper published March 2019, a group of scholars including Robert Brown, professor of landscape architecture, said that open spaces such as parks, plazas and even street design could strengthen a community's recovery after an earthquake.

One of the nation’s premier hazard research hubs, the Texas A&M Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center, will continue focusing on disaster preparedness, mitigation and recovery with its new director Michelle Meyer, assistant professor of urban planning.

As the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing renews interest in stations on the moon or Mars, the Department of Construction Science continues to lay groundwork to position the department as a leading research consultant for space-based projects.

For her impassioned work to protect Texas’ endangered, historic African-American communities, Andrea Roberts, Texas A&M assistant professor of urban planning, received a $50,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.