Cities are the forefront of global socio-economic change, with over half the world’s population living in urban areas and the other half increasingly dependent upon cities for their economic and social progress. Overcrowding, natural hazards, deteriorating infrastructure, environmental health, and financial constraints are just a few of the problems affecting global cities today.

A sensible approach to social decision making and urban management should emphasize efficiency in resource consumption, minimization of waste generation, sustainable development practices, and systemic resiliency and reliability. Georgia Tech's Center for GIS is a leading force in modeling urban dynamics to reflect the complexity and interactions among component systems. The Center works with various sponsors and collaborators to find solutions for sustainable urbanization:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sustainable Infrastructure for Energy and Water Systems is a multi-institutional project funded by the National Science Foundation integrating water and power infrastructures with their physical and socio-economic environments to examine system resiliency, sustainability, and interdependencies.  

The Mid-America Earthquake Center is a long standing collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Researchers at CGIS are calculating the cumulative effect of mitigation measures for ceiling-piping-partition nonstructural systems, which will tools and guidelines for practicing engineers and architects to enhance the seismic resilience of buildings.