News & Events

A new study from the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University warns that droughts in the latter part of this century could be the worst on record.

We are facing dual crises — a worldwide viral pandemic and the threat of an unusually active storm season in the Atlantic Ocean due to climate change. It’s more important than ever to be prepared for a worst-case scenario. Planet Texas 2050 researchers have been working the past three years to improve disaster responses during hurricanes by employing state-of-the-art modeling that will help first responders and local health authorities safely evacuate patients — especially the most critically ill — during storms. 

University of Texas researchers are warning of a situation where megadroughts — ones that last a decade a more — will become more common in Texas by the end of the 21st Century. They are urging the state to improve the ways it manages its water resources.

John Nielsen-Gammon, who is also a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, is the lead author of a new paper that forecasts the arrival of more extreme droughts through this century. These could include decades-long “megadroughts,” which have not afflicted the state for a thousand years.

Texas needs to start making plans for a future that could include unprecedented drought challenges, researchers say.

The future climate of Texas will feature drier summers and decreasing water supplies for much of the state for the remainder of the 21st century, researchers report.

Currently, Texas water planning is centered on sustaining the state in conditions comparable to the worst drought in the state’s instrumental record: a six-year spell in the 1950s. But according to climate model projections, Texas droughts by the end of the 21st century could be much more extreme — comparable to or even exceeding the 10-year megadroughts that plagued the state in its ancient past.

Artificial intelligence has the potential to have extremely beneficial but also detrimental effects on society as we know it. From helpful home robots run amok to artificial intelligence that widens the gap between rich and poor, there are many ways the increasingly present AI in our lives can go bad. University of Texas computer scientist Peter Stone joins the College of Natural Science’s “Point of Discovery” podcast to talk about this issue.

As we feel the effects of COVID-19 in our neighborhoods, Whole Communities–Whole Health wants to share some resources we hope will provide clear information for families during this public health crisis. We have created a website in Spanish and English with links to help you stay healthy, mentally and physically.

Good Systems researchers from across the 40 Acres and beyond had continued to pivot to COVID-19 research because of the urgency. Today, teams are working on everything from mapping the spread of coronavirus through the New York transportation system to helping health care workers better understand the news.

From mapping coronavirus to recording extinctions, Planet Texas 2050 faculty chair Heather Houser describes the intersection of art and data visualization.

A new study from the University of Texas at Austin discovered that urbanized areas are seeing the water that flows through Bull Creek can be traced back to municipal sources such as wastewater pipes.

A new study from The University of Texas at Austin has found that in urbanized areas, much of the water that flows through Bull Creek — which feeds Bull Creek District Park and St. Edward’s Park swimming holes — can be traced back to municipal sources such as sprinkler runoff and leakage from municipal water and wastewater pipes.

Planet Texas 2050 researchers have found that some municipal water, including wastewater, is leaking into Austin’s rain-fed springs and streams. In fact, it now makes up the majority of water flowing in some places. This raises concerns about the future of the delicate ecosystems nearby.

Good Systems researchers are working on everything from mapping the spread of coronavirus through the New York transportation system to helping health care workers better understand the news. To date, we are leading at least a dozen projects related to COVID-19, just as our grand challenge moves into its second year.

“We know that COVID-19 cases are grossly underreported nationally and in Texas. We know that poor communities and black and brown communities always suffer disproportionately, and so if you’re already having trouble accessing health care before the pandemic, it’s not necessarily magically going to open up for you,” said Karen Johnson, an associate professor at the University of Texas School of Nursing.

Associate Professor Junfeng Jiao and two research associates in UT’s Urban Information Lab are gathering commuter train and highway traffic data from across New York state to determine where the next COVID-19 hotspots will be.

UT researchers have designed a smart home beacon that gives families feedback in real time. “A lot of diseases are linked to particulate matter in the air, especially indoors, where we spend more than 90% of our time,” says JP Maestre, Ph.D. “It has very relevant health implications.”

“I want to call on my colleagues in nursing education to mount a nationally coordinated effort among nursing programs, professional nursing organizations, and regulatory boards to prepare nursing students (alongside faculty) to step into these [COVID-19 testing and healthcare] roles.”

Planet Texas 2050 is proud to support a call for global transparency: “At this time of crisis, it is more important than ever for scientists around the world to openly share their knowledge, expertise, tools, and technology… We strongly urge all scientists modeling the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its consequences for health and society to rapidly and openly publish their code (along with specifying the type of data required, model parameterizations, and any available documentation) so that it is accessible to all scientists around the world.”

Integrating sustainability throughout the educational and operational activities at The University of Texas at Austin has been a focus for years, and now the Sustainability Tracking Assessment & Rating System (STARS) has given the university its first-ever achievement of a Gold rating. This effort includes sustainability research that is led, in part, by Planet Texas 2050 and the UT Austin Energy Institute.

“Each decade has its defining moments. The first months of 2020 have brought one of ours: the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re only beginning to fathom the physical, emotional, social, and economic pains that accompany this crisis. Such events can fracture communities, but they can also build them up. The 50th anniversary of Earth Day offers Planet Texas 2050 a chance to reflect on how defining moments can mobilize millions to envision more just and healthy futures. How crises, whether they be COVID-19 or climate change, can rouse us to redress inequities and ensure the vitality of all people and places as we plan for the days, years, and decades ahead.”

“While we are all collectively focused on the threat presented by the novel coronavirus’ risks right now, we must not forget that the viruses and bacteria that cause human illness are organisms that live alongside us in a natural environment that is rapidly changing due to climate change — and that climate change mitigation must be considered as an element of preparation.”

The 50th anniversary of Earth Day offers Planet Texas 2050 a chance to reflect on how defining moments can mobilize millions to envision more just and healthy futures. How crises, whether they be COVID-19 or climate change, can rouse us to redress inequities and ensure the vitality of all people and places as we plan for the days, years, and decades ahead.

“DataX is a foundational component of a broader cyber-enabled ecosystem that allows the community of users, from researchers to decision makers to stakeholders across the state, to explore ‘what-if’ scenarios and co-design possible solutions. If you do this, you wind up with actionable learning you can actually make use of.”

The sad reality is that states are forced to fill the role of the federal government to coordinate manufacturing, procurement, and distribution of PPE and other medical equipment. This situation is indefensible and will result in unnecessary illness and death, and prolong the crisis.

When parents are under a lot of stress, they have a harder time providing a consistent environment for their children. This leads to a cycle wherein kids act out more than usual, parents have a harder time exercising patience in their responses, and in turn, everyone grows increasingly stressed and unhappy. “Kids do best when the home environment has a high level of warmth and consistency and when parents can be attuned to children’s needs,” Sarah Kate Bearman says.

A new study indicates that water flowing in natural springs and streams in parts of the Bull Creek watershed in northwest Austin mostly originates from the city’s municipal water system. This highlights the risks to the city’s water and ecological resources that result from a leaking municipal infrastructure.

Communities within Austin are disproportionately affected by climate change based on their social vulnerability.

Geosciences and Planet Texas 2050 researcher Jay Banner says that under the “business as usual” scenario in which we fail to take substantial action to curb climate changes’ effects, Austin summers could see as many as 70 more days of 100-degree heat, on average.

The Good Systems grand challenge funds projects that help ensure AI technologies meet society’s needs and values. This year’s grant options are divided into three tiers based on activity type. Proposal deadline is 5 p.m., Friday, March 27, 2020.

January is the month for vision-casting, resolution-making, and goal-setting, and our team is already hard at work putting plans in place for the coming year. But before we careen headlong into 2020, we want to take the time to reflect on the past year and appreciate how this grand challenge has grown and evolved since we first launched.

The book looks at the history of the U.S.-Mexico border through the development of ports of entry, boundary markers, transportation networks, fences, barriers, surveillance infrastructure, dams and other river engineering projects. But some of these construction projects are complicated by the fact that in many places, the border is the Rio Grande River. “When people talk about the border, they’re not really talking about the places along the international divide,” Alvarez says. “They’re talking about immigration policy and immigration enforcement policy.”

“To be sure, we must protect our rights to make health-related decisions that impact our bodies. To violate our right to bodily autonomy for one type of health decision is to set a dangerous precedent for violating our right to bodily autonomy for other health decisions. But as much as Americans love the narrative of individual liberty and personal responsibility in all realms of life (including health), infectious diseases do not conform to these principles. They lay bare the cold hard reality that humans are interconnected social creatures whose decisions — and germs — impact others.”

The Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN) Conference on Undergraduate Informatics Education will explore how to prepare undergraduate students for careers in the public and non-profit sectors, serving the public interest, particularly in support of social justice. This 1.5-day conference will be held on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin on March 3 and 4, 2020. This conference will serve as a meeting place for educators across disciplines, uniting around a common goal and vision. The conference will help to define what undergraduate education for public interest technology looks like. The conference will also showcase how individuals affiliated with member institutions can best leverage their involvement in PIT-UN, as well as showcase the benefits of PIT-UN membership to individuals that are not yet one of the participating PIT-UN institutions. To learn more about best practices and pedagogies for undergraduate informatics education, to learn more about public interest technology, and to learn more about PIT-UN, we encourage you to attend this first meeting in a series of events sponsored by PIT-UN and what we hope will become a recurring conference.

Introducing new additions to the Keynotes and Featured Speakers lineup for the 34th edition of the SXSW Conference:
Escaping Doom: Transforming Science into Experience (Design Track) – A conversation about how scientific research can be integrated into an engaging, entertaining, and educational storytelling experience, with Gensler principal David Kramer; University of Texas Assistant Dean, School of Design and Creative Technologies Doreen Lorenzo; Associate Professor in the Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Texas Fernanda Leite; and General Manager of Unreal Engine at Epic Games Marc Petit.

“Thousands of years ago, on the western coast of the Black Sea, where the water flows through the mouth of Europe’s second-longest river, the Danube, hundreds of Grecian settlers built their homes. Histria, as it was known, quickly became a major urban center with a booming trade industry. But as centuries passed, the city became riddled with numerous problems: geopolitical clashes, violence, plagues, environmental changes. Inevitably, people abandoned the area, and Histria fell to ruin. More than 2,000 years later, UT Classics Professor Adam Rabinowitz and a group of UT researchers are looking to the once-thriving colony to teach us about today’s world—and specifically about Texas.”

“One of The Mesoamerica Center’s goals in working with Planet Texas 2050 is to establish a LIDAR (light detection and ranging) archive at UT. LIDAR, an advanced surveying method using pulses of light to measure variable distances, can essentially map a 3D image of ancient sites buried under thick vegetation. Several major sites have been surveyed with LIDAR, resulting in a wealth of valuable data sets, but ones that are spread across several institutions. Accessing the data from a single archive would be an invaluable tool and is a major goal for UT.”

“Ethics is about empowering people, so it’s critical that we design AI in ways that empower people and build a more equitable and just society.”

“The emphasis on public interest technology is further demonstrated by the Good Systems Grand UT Challenge Initiative, which seeks to ensure artificial intelligence is designed to benefit society. Good Systems brings together students and researchers from more than two dozen schools and units within the university to focus not only on what AI can do, but what it should do for the public good.”

“With climate change, one of the predictions of climate science is that areas that are prone to extremes in the hydrological cycles, that is droughts and floods, will be prone to even more extremes, so more intense storms and more intense droughts. We’ve been seeing that. We’ve been seeing that in the last several years.” 

We know people and AI can be more successful together than apart, but we also know that AI can be used in ways that are harmful. How can we develop and evaluate intelligent systems and avoid dangerous unintended consequences? Can we use and regulate AI-based technologies with societal values and ethics at their core? What makes a system “good”?

We have less than a decade to find out. Please join us on this journey.

“We’ve come to appreciate in society that technology in general, AI in particular, is a life and death matter. We don’t have very many ethical checks on IT development. If you want to release a new app on the app store, you just need Apple to approve it. It’s tremendously easy to release a new software product, but it could have very severe, potentially life-threatening consequences.” 

President Fenves introduced Good Systems during the 2019 State of the University Address: “The third Bridging Barriers Grand Challenge will work to ensure that the needs and values of society drive the design of artificial intelligence technologies.”

The Amazon rainforest in Brazil is burning at a record rate. Brazil’s space research center said it has detected the highest number of fires in the region since it began tracking them in 2013. The entire world is now paying attention and there is increasing international pressure on the Brazilian government to take action. Professor Jay Banner from the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin explains the impact of these fires.

“Challenges of rapid population growth, increasing urbanization, climate change and the pressure these put on natural resources such as water, all are staring Texas in the face. Planet Texas 2050 is The University of Texas at Austin’s eight-year ‘sprint’ to better understand these forces, and as part of this project, Adam Rabinowitz, an associate professor of classics, is looking for lessons in settlements of the past, and one of the best regions to find those is around the Black Sea.”

“We are really aiming to understand how people have been resilient in the past and presently… So instead of imposing strategies for resilience before we get to know communities, (we are) actually going and learning about what people have been doing up until now.”

How can we create access to nature for everyone, not just people in communities with the resources to create and fund land trusts? Katherine Lieberknecht’s pursuit of this question ultimately led to a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University. Today, Dr. Lieberknecht is assistant professor in the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches courses and conducts research related to the planning of urban ecology, water resources, green infrastructure, agriculture, sustainable land use and resilience. She also serves as chair of Planet Texas 2050, UT’s first grand challenge research program, and is faculty lead for the Texas Metro Observatory, a Planet Texas 2050 research project.

“I view UT Austin’s leadership and initial investment in this program as a critical spark plug to help our state figure out the future of Texas. Although our research is focused on one state, findings will be relevant to other areas experiencing an increase in extreme weather events, increasing urbanization and rapid population growth. Texas’ diversity, rate of population growth and vulnerability to changes in climate make it a useful test case to examine approaches for planning new climate futures.”

When pressed to summarize the path of his wide spanning career, Paul Adams offers one word, “discourse.” Adams, a professor at UT Austin’s Department of Geography and the Environment, is interested in how people discuss often contentious subjects and what makes these communications more or less successful.

“Before trust in artificial intelligence can be established, soldiers must first feel they have ownership of their robots, and the technology must be transparent enough ‘to make sure that humans can understand and interpret why a machine is making the decision it’s making,’ Ken Fleischmann, associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information, said recently at a Mad Scientist conference in Austin. Fleischmann pointed out that while the development of artificial intelligence has yielded brilliant outcomes with chess and other games, it’s quite another thing to have a robot that will ‘behave ethically on the battlefield.'”

“The whole purpose of Good Systems is to ensure that AI is making the world a better place and is helping people. That’s exactly what we’re doing in this project. We’re using AI to help people.”

“When we limit our thinking about the health of our nation to a conversation about health care, we are missing upwards of 80 percent of the factors that actually contribute to our health. According to the County Health Rankings, only about 20 percent of our health can be credited to access to health care, while 40 percent can be credited to social and economic factors (e.g., employment, income), 30 percent to health behaviors (e.g., sedentary lifestyles, drug and alcohol use), and 10 percent to environmental factors (e.g., safe and accessible sidewalks, air and water pollution),” says School of Nursing and Whole Communities–Whole Health researcher Karen Johnson.

“You’ll see ‘sprawl at Mad Max levels, while the upper 10% all drive around…in their electric vehicles.'” UT School of Architecture and Planet Texas 2050 researcher Michael Oden attempts to answer the Austin Chronicle’s questions: Will it be bad? Can we be ready? Or should we not care?

Thirteen federal agencies issued the scientific report, which offers clear — sometimes dire — predictions if the U.S. and global community fail to take significant steps to address climate change. The assessment also warns that damage caused by extreme weather events and persistent changes in rainfall and temperature could reduce the American economy by 10% by the end of the century. What does the report really mean?

“When developing policy guidelines and regulation, it is critically important to separate these various technologies and applications so as to deal with them individually. Any effort to consider all of AI as one unit when developing policies and initiatives would be very misguided.” — Peter Stone, Department of Computer Science professor and Good Systems founding researcher

Dell Medical School’s Lourdes Rodriguez talks about how her academic training and childhood in Puerto Rico give her a keen sense for what it means to prepare for — and recover from — natural and man-made disasters.

They say that what starts here in Texas changes the world, and that phrase has never rung truer than it does today. Extreme weather events and population numbers are on the rise, and Texas is experiencing its fair share of both.

“Rather than focusing on a return to an idyllic nature and childhood relationship, what is urgently needed is climate change education for young children that is situated within the actual ecological contexts in which all children’s everyday lives are situated — not just the natures that privileged children can access in forest kindergarten and preschools. We need education that values the knowledges and experiences that young children have of the environmental challenges facing their particular contexts.”

We need a more nimble and nuanced approach to urban water management, and not only because of climate change and growing urban populations, but because many communities urgently need to address failing infrastructure systems.

In October, Good Systems team members hosted a Good Systems 311 Calls and 500 City Hackathon. UT students used A.I. and machine learning methods to analyze large scale data sets of 311 calls, which log resident complaints, concerns, and non-emergency problems. This is valuable information that, when examined on aggregate, can help inform local decision-makers and city planners.

In September’s State of the University Address, President Gregory Fenves announced to faculty, staff, and students that Whole Communities–Whole Health has been selected as UT’s second Bridging Barriers grand challenge.

Researchers from nearly two dozen disciplines have been working for more than a year to build a grand challenge project that produces a new way to study human communities while, at the same time, responding to a critically underserved group in Central Texas: children and families living with adversity.

In honor of International Archaeology Day this month, Planet Texas 2050 researcher Adam Rabinowitz takes us behind the scenes to the ancient city of Histria, in Rome, which was abandoned in the 7th century AD because of a changing climate.

Faculty members from across the university will work together to explore ways to foster the healthy development of children and families, struggling with adversity, by fundamentally rethinking how cohort studies are conducted on social, behavioral and health issues.

Planet Texas 2050 researcher Steven Richter, from the School of Architecture, joined graduate students from around campus in October for Sustainability Week. His work is part of the Texas Metro Observatory. “What does urbanization mean across Texas? We are looking at interdisciplinary questions, like how socio-economic patterns or changes in the built environment affect municipal water or energy use across the state.”

The Good Systems development year is off to a running start! Thank you to everyone who has made our first two events a success. You have shown drive an initiative in this new UT Grand Challenge from Bridging Barriers and we hope to keep that enthusiasm going throughout the year.

We at Planet Texas 2050 and Bridging Barriers are humbled by the success of yesterday’s Austin Family Reunion. A Texas-sized THANK YOU to everyone who braved the rain and the traffic to be with us. We hope you had great conversations, met some new friends, and enjoyed your time in the beautiful space provided by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. 

We’re excited to share with you that Planet Texas 2050 is partnering with the Austin Community Design and Development Center (ACDDC) to create a solutions-driven community center. Our pilot project will be a place where knowledge and data meet understanding and implementation, where scientists and city planners stand alongside neighborhood advocates. 

“Demographers expect Texas’s population to double by 2050. To accommodate that growth, existing cities will be forced to increase density in their urban cores, spread out, or a combination of both.”

Planet Texas 2050 lead researcher has been named the next dean of Portland State University’s Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science. He will begin his appointment on Sept. 1, 2018.

“As Texas cities grow, natural watersheds will become urbanized. We can…. improve our understanding of the complex interactions among hydrologic systems, ecosystems, and human infrastructure systems.”

“I can tell you that real preparedness… is something that’s built into our cities, settlements, roads and infrastructure. And we are woefully unprepared for this year’s hurricane season…”

This past January, our team of more than 100 researchers and faculty members launched Planet Texas 2050 — UT Austin’s first grand challenge.

The CENTRAL organizing committee has been very active this year. Following acceptance of our development plan, we got right to work. People have met, gathered, conversed, and had a lot of fun sharing knowledge and ideas about how to make The University of Texas at Austin’s second grand challenge a reality.  

The invisible line that divides the arid western part of the country from the wetter eastern half is on the move, and that has important implications for the Texas capital. “[The 2011 drought], which was historic in terms of how intense it was, may just be a taste of things to come in the future.”

This summer, the country‘s largest indoor air quality and surface chemistry experiment brings leading experts to the university’s J.J. Pickle Research Campus to participate in an unprecedented initiative aimed at identifying the key causes of indoor air pollution.

“In our eyes, the only way to meet this challenge is an ‘all boots on the ground’ approach of integrating data and research questions from across the disciplines… Our goal is to get to 2050 with a Texas that is economically vibrant, safe, healthy, and has enough for all who live here.”

UT geoscientist Daniella Rempe has helped identify a new way trees get water during severe droughts: by sending roots deep down into the bedrock.

UT engineer Ben Hodges is finding ways to make roadways less likely to flood.

The Trump administration’s 2019 budget proposal reduces EPA funding by 23 percent. Lost in the noise was an even deeper gutting of several individual research and management programs at the EPA, which, if successful, will have great negative impacts on human health and productivity. Planet Texas 2050 researcher and indoor air quality expert Richard Corsi, Ph.D., explains.

Members of the Planet Texas 2050 research team kicked off the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2018 Annual Conference with their first Reddit AMA.

This past October, I wrote to tell you that UT’s first Bridging Barriers research grand challenge would be Planet Texas 2050.

Vice President for Research Dan Jaffe introduces Planet Texas 2050 and new projects in development that could one day become grand challenges at The University of Texas at Austin.

Extreme weather events, population growth and aging infrastructure are common challenges Texas shares with the nation and world.

The Bridging Barriers initiative is challenging researchers from different disciplines to find intersecting goals and work together to solve the world’s most pressing problems.

“We’re not trying to solve as many problems as we can. We’re trying to solve one very big problem very well.”