Houston Solutions Lab

Houston METRORail Human Factors Safety Analysis

Concern over METRORail light rail vehicles collisions with cars, pedestrians, and motorists led the Kinder Institute to fund Rice Human Factors researchers to conduct a safety analysis of the rail line.

Data-Driven Campaign Design and Evaluation for Census 2020: Get Out the Count (GOTC) in Houston

This document evaluates efforts undertaken by Houston in Action and partners across Harris County, Texasduring the 2020 “Say Yes to the Census” campaign. The primary goal is to understand whether efforts to contact individuals in Harris County and inform them about the 2020 Census had an impact on the 2020 Census response rates.

Measuring Flooding with the Houston Fire Department

Bob Stein and Rick Wilson conducted two studies about flooding and local knowledge/perspective.

Scalable and Robust Prototype of Sensor Network for Real-Time Street Level Flood Measurement

Gary Woods and team from the civil and environmental engineering department created low-cost flood sensors that were tested on Rice’s campus in spring 2019.

Houston Solutions Lab Pairs Academics with City

Three projects were selected in the first round of funding, including two for flood research.

Coupled Flood Alert System and Infrastructure Risk Modeling for White Oak Bayou

The project team developed and implemented a radar-based flood alert system as a flood mitigation tool for the City of Houston and to inform infrastructure risk modeling, focusing on White Oak Bayou.

Small-Scale Applications of Distributed Hydrologic Model Vflo® to Characterize Impacts from Mitigation Projects and Site-scale Re-development on Street-Level Flooding

This report uses hydrological modeling to assess if mitigation techniques used throughout the city were successful.

Taking Stock: Housing Trends in the Houston Area

A report analyzing housing trends in the Houston metropolitan area.

Streetlights in the City: Understanding the Distribution of Houston Streetlights

This reports documents and analyzes the location of streetlights in Houston.

Shifting Gears: Framing Bike-sharing Trends in Sun Belt Cities

While bike-sharing is typically framed as a means of transportation for weekday commuters, a new analysis of the programs in Austin, Denver, Fort Worth and Houston indicates that users frequently turn to bike-sharing for recreational purposes in these cities.