CREST Center for Geospatial and Environmental Informatics, Modeling and Simulation

The Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST) program supports the enhancement of research capabilities of minority-serving institutions through the establishment of centers that effectively integrate education and research. CREST promotes the development of new knowledge, enhancements of the research productivity of individual faculty, and an expanded presence of students historically underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines.

With National Science Foundation support, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi establishes the Center for Geospatial and Environmental Informatics, Modeling and Simulation. Growing population demands, threats from storms, and sea encroachment put coastal communities at the forefront of engineering and scientific efforts to reduce vulnerabilities for their long-term prosperity.

Improving coastal resilience is a cost-effective approach to prepare for increasingly uncertain coastal environments. The modeling and simulation capabilities developed by the Center will provide guidance to communities to rebound more quickly from a disaster event and to reduce negative human health, environmental, and economic impacts. The Center will recruit and support underrepresented minority students to pursue degrees in STEM fields with a focus on coastal resilience and expand the university’s education and research capacity.

The Center articulates three research subprojects addressing the challenges of coastal resilience by developing new approaches that integrate remote and autonomous sensing with geospatial computing, Artificial Intelligence/deep learning, and big data analytics for comprehensive coastal zone monitoring at different scales. The focus is on improving resiliency to extreme coastal hazards and episodic and persistent events (e.g., hurricane and sea-level rise).

Subproject 1 develops new approaches integrating remote and autonomous sensing with geospatial computing and artificial intelligence to improve coastal zone monitoring and resiliency decision-making. It generates detailed and accurate geographic information systems data for characterization of the built and natural environment. Subproject 2 contributes to the understanding of the urban water cycle and the resilience of water infrastructure through integrated characterization, simulation, and assessments.

Subproject 3 investigates how emerging data sources and advanced geospatial computing can be applied to evaluate, assist, and improve a coastal community’s physical, behavioral, and social health after disasters.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.