Research

The 100-year floodplain, a longstanding metric for determining the chance of an area’s inundation by flood waters, appears to be an inaccurate measure for predicting potential flood-related loss, said Samuel Brody, professor of urban planning at Texas A&M.

Staten Island’s recovery from October 2012’s Hurricane Sandy would benefit from new homes assembled from prefabricated components rather than homes built with traditional construction methods, said Brent Gohmert, an environmental design major at Texas A&M in a paper he wrote during the spring 2013 semester.

After investigating home building practices common in Texas colonias, impoverished areas near the Mexico border, a Texas A&M architecture Ph.D. student is working to share affordable, energy efficient construction techniques and home designs with colonias residents.

The difference in energy consumption between two homes in Qatar — one built to a strict energy efficiency standard and the other using conventional construction — is being evaluated in a Texas A&M College of Architecture study.

Emergency management planners could reduce losses and strengthen community resilience by mapping socially vulnerable areas and focusing hazard mitigation efforts where they are most needed, said Shannon Van Zandt, a Texas A&M urban planning professor.

Texans enjoyed lower home electric bills and cleaner air after state legislators in 2001 adopted new energy and construction codes for single-family residences, according to a report from scientists from the Texas A&M Energy Systems Laboratory.

A building energy use "tune-up" procedure developed by researchers at the Texas A&M Energy Systems Lab has so far yielded more than $100 million in energy savings from little more than 300 client buildings, said Charles Culp, professor of architecture and ESL associate director.

Significant energy savings could be realized in small homes in hot climates with an air conditioning system being researched by Simge Andolsun, a Ph.D. architecture student at Texas A&M, that cools rooms based on where people are at different times during the day.

Disparities between the potential and actual energy use of four buildings in Qatar will be investigated by a research team led by John Bryant, an associate professor of construction science who also serves on the engineering faculty at Texas A&M University at Qatar.

An design efficiency checklist for medical facilities developed by researchers provides solutions for flawed floor plans that can contribute to medical staff fatigue, cause distractions that hinder patient-care and potentially result in higher medical costs.

The departure of U.S. synagogue designs from historicism to Modernism in the 1950s and their expressions of American values will be investigated by Anat Geva, associate professor of architecture at Texas A&M.

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.

The National Science Foundation presented visualization professor Ann McNamara with its prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award to fund her research to enhance mobile augmented reality technology, which is used to combine real and virtual worlds.

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.

A world-class system aimed at modernizing the delivery of health care in the Nigerian state of Akwa Ibon was developed with leadership from the Ustawi Research Institute, headed by Macharia Waruingi, a faculty fellow at the Center for Health Systems & Design.