NSF Awards $1.2 Million to A&M System Researchers to Study Effects of Hurricane Harvey
The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced awards totaling more than $1.2 million to support 13 research projects throughout the Texas A&M University System that aim to understand the effects of natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey.
“In the aftermath of Harvey, the Texas A&M System has stepped up to aid in the recovery and rebuilding of our state in unprecedented and inspiring ways,” said A&M System Chancellor John Sharp. “I am proud that our researchers are hard at work helping us better understand and prepare for the next storm, and I’m grateful to the NSF for supporting these efforts.”
The NSF announced 59 new grants totaling $5.3 million for hurricane-related research on October 10. The Texas A&M System’s projects represented about 22 percent of those and received about 23 percent of the funding.
System entities receiving grants included Texas A&M University, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, and West Texas A&M University.
The funded projects cover a variety of research areas, including the hurricane’s impact on water quality, human-robotic interactions during the recovery process, a natural disaster’s effects on food distribution, the use of unmanned aerial systems during hurricane response, and strategies to provide better coastal protection, among others.
Here is the full list of the A&M System projects funded:
- Anna Armitage, Texas A&M University at Galveston: RAPID Collaborative Research: Do mangroves provide better coastal protection than salt marshes? A Hurricane Harvey case study from Port Aransas, Texas, USA
- Shankar Chellam, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station: RAPID: Water quality impacts of hurricane Harvey: Distribution of metals and diversity of microbial communities in greater Houston
- Jens Figlus, Texas A&M University at Galveston: RAPID: Hurricane Harvey Rapid Response: In-Situ Barrier Island Storm Impact and Recovery Measurements of Hydrodynamics, Morphodynamics, and Sedimentation Acr. Hog and F. Island TX
- Hui Liu, Texas A&M University at Galveston: RAPID: Urgent sampling zooplankton for assessing ecosystem restoration of Galveston Bay after catastrophic impacts of Hurricane Harvey
- Ranjana Mehta, Texas A&M University: RAPID: Human-Robotic Interactions During Harvey Recovery Operations
- Paul Montagna, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi: RAPID: Capturing the Signature of Hurricane Harvey on Texas Coastal Lagoons
- Ali Mostafavi, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station: RAPID: Houston in Hurricane Harvey (H3): Establishing Disaster System-of-Systems Requirements for Network-Centric and Data-Enriched Preparedness and Response
- Ali Mostafavi, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station: RAPID: Assessment of Risks and Vulnerability in Coupled Human-Physical Networks of Houston’s Flood Protection, Emergency Response, and Transportation Infrastructure in Harvey
- Robin Murphy, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station: RAPID: Collaborative Research: Unmanned Aerial System Datasets from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma
- Christopher Patrick, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi: RAPID: Measuring the response of stream communities to Hurricane Harvey across a semi-arid to sub-humid gradient
- Nathanael Rosenheim, Texas A&M University: RAPID: Critical Infrastructure Disruption and the Food Distribution Network: The Implications for Food Security Following a Natural Disaster
- Arn Womble, West Texas A&M University: RAPID: Preservation of 3D Damage Data for Reality-Capture-Enhanced Modeling of Engineered Steel Structures on the Texas Coast Subjected to 2017 Hurricane Harvey
- Le Xie, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station: RAPID: Powering through the hurricane: self-organizing power electronics intelligence at the network edge
About The Texas A&M University System
The Texas A&M University System is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation, with a budget of $4.55 billion. Through a statewide network of 11 universities and seven state agencies, the Texas A&M System educates more than 148,000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year. System-wide, research and development expenditures exceeded $972 million in FY 2016 and helped drive the state’s economy.
Contact: Laylan Copelin
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