Our Work Is Local, but Our Impact Is Global

This project examined how the cities of Houston and San Antonio are preparing for climate change and addressing existing environmental justice issues.z

The Urban Watershed Evolution project was a collaborative, multi-disciplinary approach toward understanding the impacts of urbanization on natural waterways within the Austin area to work towards establishing a framework for policies and governance that increased ecological and societal resilience in urban centers.

In order to study the effectiveness of using a blend of sensing technology like smartphone apps and wearable technology, self-reported surveys, and readily available group-level information (grades, attendance), our team developed a study to understand more about the social lives, sleep habits, physical activity levels, and academic performance of 1000 UT undergraduate students in the 2019-2020 school year.

The team originally planned an extension of the UT1000 study to examine the relationship between biological indicators of stress, perception of stress, life events, and lifestyle in UT undergrads. This project addressed these challenges by developing and deploying environmental home beacons, wearable activity bands, and smartphone-based surveys.

The µP-STREAM (Micro-controller Platform Sending Telemetry Real-Time for Earth’s Adaptive Models) project is part of Planet Texas 2050’s larger cyberinfrastructure project (see DataX, DOLCe, and Integrated Modelling for Adaptive Decision Making).