Research

A team of Texas A&M urban planners are investigating the value of allowing “citizen scientists” to collect environmental data for agencies charged with protecting lives and property in natural disasters as part of a two-year National Science Foundation study.

Business leaders are touting a vision for an advanced network of industrial distribution facilities based, in part, on findings from a 2016 study of vacant urban land led by Galen Newman, an associate professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M.

Galen Newman, a Texas A&M landscape architecture professor, is editor of the Landscape Research Record, a prestigious scholarly journal published by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, where he also serves as vice president for research and creative scholarship.

Texas A&M urban planning and public health researchers are studying whether a new El Paso bus rapid transit (BRT) line — a system with dedicated lanes that mimic the efficiency of rail transit — changes walking habits of residents who live close to the line’s stations.

Architects can now check their designs’ International Building Code compliance with a cloud-based app developed by SMARTreview Inc., a firm led by founder and CEO Mark Clayton, Texas A&M professor of architecture.

In the emerging Central Asian country of Kazakhstan, Stephen Caffey, a Texas A&M architecture professor, is advising an artist-led initiative promoting the country’s storied history, cultural diversity and aspirations.

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, two Texas A&M groups have teamed up to launch the Community Resilience Collaborative, a program aimed at bolstering the resilience of the state’s coastal communities to natural hazards and at restoring their habitats and ecosystems.

A Texas A&M research team is investigating how coastal municipal planners can respond to increasing flood threats in rapidly growing coastal communities and build sustainable and healthy ecosystems using “green” stormwater management methods.

A construction science professor is working to lower the cost of highway construction bids by optimizing data-driven construction scheduling methods in advance of a $1.5 trillion federal highway infrastructure rebuilding proposal.

Data security, automation, and a rising demand for digital modeling are three technology trends impacting the building industry in 2018, said James Benham, guest lecturer of construction science and CEO of JBKnowledge, Inc.

Faculty and graduate student researchers in the Texas A&M College of Architecture have developed a new method to calculate proposed health care facility space requirements that overcome significant limitations of previously established procedures.

With a National Science Foundation grant, Texas A&M Professor of Visualization Francis Quek has developed technology for talking books that allows people who are blind to access more literature with increased command over their reading experiences.

Teacher, firefighter and professional athlete used to top the list of what students at Neal Elementary in Bryan wanted to be when they grew up. But in the past couple of years, Neal students in a Texas A&M study began to include variations on "engineer" in their list.

Ahmed K. Ali, an assistant professor of architecture at Texas A&M University, earned the Architectural Research Centers Consortium’s 2018 New Researcher Award, a prestigious accolade bestowed annually to an emerging scholar.

The field of urban planning is gaining interest as cities around the world, including nearby Houston, are facing increased exposure to weather-related risks and hazards ranging from sea level rise and flooding to temperature build-up and urban heat island effect.