Research Portal
Research Themes
Purpose and Background of CBE Research Portal’s Research Themes
As used in the CBE Research Portal, Research Themes are broad, transdisciplinary topics or methodologies of scholarship. This portal uses Research Themes to describe and link research efforts across CBE. They represent commonalities across the full portfolio of CBE research; they are not an exhaustive list of all possible research foci. These Research Themes were derived from cross-disciplinary analysis of CBE researchers, labs/centers, and projects, and CBE’s recent strategic planning effort that led to similar insights about common areas of scholarship.
Research Themes: Scopes & Definitions
- Arts, Humanities & Urbanism – Studies of civic culture, including public art and community design-build efforts
- Climate & Energy – Scholarship on climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as energy efficiency
- Community Engagement & Advocacy – Includes community-based participatory scholarship and learning, as well as applied scholarship toward societal change
- Data Science & Spatial Analysis – Data-driven methodologies like GIS and remote sensing, as well as “big data”, artificial intelligence, and other methods of scholarship rooted in analyzing large datasets
- Design & Building – Built environment scholarship at the scales of the interior space to the building
- Economy, Finance & Development – Includes real estate finance and markets as well as economics and community development, from the scales of the building to the region
- Education – Scholarship on education in the built environment
- Equity & Justice – Methodologies and topics that are related to addressing bias, representation, access, and other aspects of equity and justice in the built environment
- Food – Urban horticulture and agriculture, and cultures or systems of food
- Global Built Environment – International scholarship as well as scholarship that has international implications
- Green Building & Infrastructure – Methods and scholarship such as carbon sequestration and green infrastructure, in the built environment, at the scales of the building to the region
- History, Theory & Conservation – Historical and theoretical analysis of the built environment, as well as conservation, adaptation and reuse
- Housing & Homelessness – Includes social and real-estate implications of homelessness, housing affordability and livability in the built environment
- Infrastructure & Transportation – Includes management and policy aspects as well as design/build scholarship on the topics
- Land Use & Planning – Includes land use and planning with respect transportation, housing, infrastructure, community and ecology, from the building to the region
- Modeling & Scenario Planning – Methodologies of long-term, strategic thinking and modeling on urban potentials; at the scale of materials to regions
- Natural Hazards – Extreme weather events, earthquakes, and other typically non-human-induced hazards
- Natural Resources & Sustainability – Use or conservation of resources as well as broader notions of sustainability in the built environment
- Policy & Law – Research aimed at influencing or assisting policymakers, as well as scholarship on laws and policy related to the built environment
- Resilience – Includes scholarship using social as well as engineering-based definitions of resilience
- Safety, Health and Well-being – Scholarship on supporting human safety, health and well-being, from the individual, to built environment industries, to the region
- Security & Privacy – Built environment technologies, policies, and impacts with respect to security and privacy, from the scales of the individual to industries, institutions and society
- Technology & Innovation – Includes both scholarly methodologies utilizing technology and innovation, as well as products or results related to the topics
- Water – Water-based ecosystems, water management, and water resources in the built environment
