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Research

Research, Innovation, and Collaboration that Provide Solutions

The world in which HARC exists is dynamic and extreme events—whether related to natural disasters or public health crises—drive planning and policy efforts across all levels of government and the private sector.

Now more than ever there is a need for science-based solutions and independent analyses that address overlapping economic, environmental and social issues. With our multi-disciplinary, innovative team, HARC is positioned to address the most pressing sustainability challenges and opportunities.

Air

HARC’s work in air quality research and management includes air quality modeling, emission reduction technologies, emissions monitoring technology and policy. In addition, researchers study regional impacts of and adaptations to climate change. The air research program is multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional, objective, and non-partisan.

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Energy

HARC’s Clean Energy group provides research, tools, and technical assistance as the global community works to decarbonize the electric power sector and mitigate physical climate risks. The team's work guides policymakers, community stakeholders, and industry leaders towards improvements in areas such as electric power resilience, energy efficiency, distributed energy resources, and sustainable, net-zero facility planning.

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Water

Water research emphasizes water quality and quantity, watershed management, biodiversity and ecological function, and ecosystem informatics. Integration, analysis, and dissemination of information regarding important water issues are considered key to advancing more sustainable management of coastal watersheds, water supplies, and water quality.

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Climate Research

HARC’s Climate Research program uses data analytics to facilitate a greater understanding of climate risk and aids in the adoption of climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. The program provides robust analyses and applied research in support of technical assistance and science-based policies for the private and public sectors.

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Geospatial

HARC uses a variety of geospatial and analytical tools to develop data and applications. Our geospatial platform allows HARC to create private or public applications to view data using maps, charts, and other visualization methods. HARC has access to a variety of application templates that can be configured to the needs of the project, minimizing the need for in-depth programming, and thus focusing on the more important task of communicating information in an engaging and intuitive manner.

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Climate Equity

Climate equity ensures the just distribution of the benefits of climate protection efforts and alleviates unequal burdens created by climate change. Our Climate Equity Initiative informs and supports co-development and implementation of climate equity and resilience initiatives in underserved communities.

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Explore Our Research

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Policy Brief: The Energy Permitting Reform Act 2024

HARC's latest policy brief, Understanding the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024, summarizes and analyzes the legislation, comparing it to the Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act of 2023 and recent federal rules. The brief also proposes recommendations to lawmakers.
Houston Harris Heat Action Team H3AT Mapping Campaign

The Houston Harris Heat Action Team's H3AT Mapping Campaign is a community heat-mapping project that brings together local volunteers, public and private organizations, universities, and non-profit organizations to co-produce heat maps.

Climate Equity Framework and Toolkit for an Equitable Energy Transition in Greater Houston

Houston Energy Transition Initiative (HETI) in conjunction with HARC and Sallie Greenberg Consulting launched the Climate Equity Framework and Toolkit for an Equitable Transition in Greater Houston, providing comprehensive insights and best practices for engagement between energy companies and communities they impact.

Equity Informed Climate Resilience Plan for Port Arthur

Released in partnership with Community In-Power and Development Association, the Equity Informed Climate Resilience Plan in Port Arthur (EQUIP PA) is a community-led, climate data driven, and equity-informed resilience plan for Port Arthur, Texas.
HARC’s Expanded Vision and Priorities

Learn more about HARC's expanded vision and priorities to help improve the quality of life for all citizens of Texas and the world.
HARC’s Commitment to Climate Equity

HARC is committed to engaging in practices that consider and support ecological, societal, and economic health and vitality that will meet the needs of the present generation without compromising those of the future. Learn more about HARC's commitment to climate equity here.

USDA Forest Service “ForUsTree” Initiative

The initiative, “ForUsTree: Creating an Inclusive Community Canopy within Houston and Harris County,” will use equitable and inclusive engagement and a community-based approach to implement multiple tree plantings, reforestation projects, and educational activities in the region’s most vulnerable areas.

HyVelocity Hydrogen Hub

As part of our climate equity strategy, HARC will work with HyVelocity Gulf Coast Hydrogen Hub partners to engage communities in planning for benefits programs that meet their needs, and bring investment and good jobs to fenceline and disadvantaged communities.
Advancing Climate Equity Through Community Benefits Hubs

Climate equity involves ensuring the just distribution of the benefits of climate protection efforts and alleviating unequal burdens created by climate change. Our Community Benefits Hub framework aims to build capacity in disadvantaged communities; empower community representatives; and ensure accountability of benefits to communities.
DOE Southcentral Onsite Energy ​Technical Assistance

HARC hosts the U.S. Department of Energy's Southcentral Onsite Energy Technical Assistance Partnership, providing technical assistance and hosting webinars and workshops for industrial facilities and other large energy users (across Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico) to increase the adoption of onsite clean energy technologies.

A Case for Cool Trees: Advancing Houston’s Tree Equity Report

Funded by the Mitsubishi Corporation, HARC's report, "A Case for Cool Trees: Advancing Houston’s Tree Equity," provides guidance on how to plan and conduct urban tree plantings equitably to reduce climate and health risks, and makes the evidence-based case for increasing tree canopy and improving tree equity in cities, especially for urban heat mitigation.
Galveston Bay Regional Monitoring Database

The Galveston Bay Regional Monitoring Database is a centralized, interactive portal that provides a significant amount of quality-assured data to support conservation, management, and research communities who are interested in the Galveston Bay.
Houston Gulf Coast Area State of the Birds

The Houston Gulf Coast Area State of the Birds StoryMap is aimed at understanding the health of the region’s bird population and the environments in which we all live.
HARC’s Strategic Plan

The new Strategic Plan includes new Mission and Vision statements, and comprehensive Strategic Initiatives and Actions that detail how we will develop and implement programs that address the challenges related to sustainability, resilience, and climate equity.
Texas Power Sector at the Crossroads: Challenges and Opportunities in a Changing Climate

Investors, regulators, insurance companies, and rating agencies recognize the risks associated with climate change impacts and call for greater transparency. Beyond the growing push for decarbonization of the energy system, extreme weather increasingly affects business operations and the bottom line. HARC's Climate and Resilience series will feature reports and date meant to better prepare communities for climate change impacts.
Leading with Equity in Adaptation Practice (LEAP)

The Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) is looking to hire a consultant to work on the Gulf of Mexico Leading with Equity in Adaptation Practice (LEAP) program to further develop training materials from the perspective of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI).
Powering the future: Texas power sector pivoting to climate resilience

HARC’s team announces the first in a series of white papers providing an analysis of the risks within Texas’ power sector, Powering the future: Texas Power Sector Pivoting to Climate Resilience. This position paper provides keen insight into the changing landscape of climate risk disclosure and climate change impacts on the power sector in Texas while highlighting key opportunities for resilience during this crucial time.
Impacts of Assimilative Capacity of Reservoirs StoryMap

An Esri StoryMap demonstrating the impacts of Assimilative Capacity of Reservoirs on Coastal inflows project assesses assimilative capacity of the Lake Livingston reservoir and related impacts on freshwater inflows to the Galveston Bay estuary.

2020 Annual Report

HARC's 2020 Annual Report highlights the successes of the organization and is the result of ongoing partnerships and innovative collaborations.

Resilience Science Information Network (RESIN)

The purpose of the RESIN portal is to develop and share a comprehensive set of data describing future climate impacts to the Greater Houston-Galveston Region.

Know your Aquifer

The Know Your Aquifer Story Map provides information on what an aquifer is, how aquifers are used, how we get drinking water, and what entities govern their usage.
ENERGY FELLOW – A Community Energy Systems Planning Tool

HARC, along with project partners University of Houston and Fugro are creating a user-friendly webtool to promote the deployment of District Energy Systems (DES) and community microgrids.

A Vegetative View: Harris County, TX

A Vegetative View: Harris County, Texas is a mapping application that presents a series of data layers describing structural characteristics of the urban vegetative canopy within Harris County, Texas
Headwaters to Baywaters: A Future of Urban Resilience

The goal of the Headwaters to Baywaters initiative (launched by Bayou Land Conservancy (BLC), Buffalo Bayou Partnership (BBP), Galveston Bay Foundation (GBF), Houston Audubon Society (HAS), and Katy Prairie Conservancy (KPC) ) is to ensure healthy lands, healthy waters, and healthy communities for the greater Houston region.

Winter Storm Uri’s Impacts & Pathways to Resilience in Texas

Winter Storm Uri moved across North America from February 13–17, 2021, causing blackouts for over 9.7 million people in the U.S. and Mexico, most notably in Texas where power supply and grid failures led to prolonged outages, culminating in an energy and water crisis. This application connects the water, energy, and air impacts of Winter Storm Uri and highlights strategies that could lead to more resilience in the future.

What You Can Do Tool

The What You Can Do tool is how individuals can help the Galveston Bay, in ways that fit interests and the amount of time volunteers have. In 2020, the Galveston Bay Foundation added more links and resources to learn about the bay and help safely from the comfort of home.
Toward Wetland Protection in the Houston-Galveston Region

This report assesses wetland mitigation in the Houston-Galveston metropolitan region and enhances a regional decision support tool to provide information to local governments and citizens, allowing them to access information describing potential development impacts to watersheds, wetlands and the ecosystem services that they provide.
Galveston Bay Wetland Mitigation Assessment and Local Government Capacity Building

This report evaluates the USACE wetland mitigation program records and serves as a regional decision support tool to provide information to local governments and citizens, allowing them to access information describing potential development impacts to wetlands, floodplains, and water quality.
ERCOT Interconnection Dashboard

The ERCOT Interconnection Dashboard helps track investment in new generation across Texas and to identify trends that will facilitate further investment decisions.
Clean Energy Hub

The Clean Energy Hub, funded by the State Energy Conservation Office (SECO), houses a variety of interactive tools, podcasts, webinars, guides, and case studies to help accelerate the adoption of distributed generation and energy efficiency projects in Texas.
Regional Groundwater Science Partnership

HARC is partnering with multiple organizations to provide a science-based review of groundwater in the Houston-Galveston Region.
2019 Annual Report

HARC's 2019 Annual Report highlights the successes of the organization and is the result of ongoing partnerships and innovative collaborations. Thank you to our supporters, especially our partners and the funders that make HARC’s work possible.
Funding Resilience in the Greater Houston Region: Synopsis from a Public-Private Sector Workshop

HARC’s most recent Green Paper offers specific examples of how communities can fund recovery along with considerations that should be given to communities and the natural environment.

Building a Legacy

At HARC, we are fortunate to conduct our research and undertake this work out of a living lab that showcases green building design, technology, and operations in action.
Impacts of Assimilative Capacity of Reservoirs

The Impacts of Assimilative Capacity of Reservoirs on Coastal Inflows project assesses assimilative capacity of the Lake Livingston reservoir and related impacts on freshwater inflows to the Galveston Bay estuary.
DOE Southcentral and Upper West Combined Heat and Power Technical Assistance

DOE Technical Assistance Partnerships (TAP) program promotes CHP technology solutions for the industrial and manufacturing sector, critical infrastructure, institutions, commercial facilities, and utilities.
Find Your Watershed Tool

This application is a tool to find out what watershed you live in, and how your watershed fares in terms of overall environmental health.
COVID-19 Impacts

HARC's COVID-19 research studied the regulatory measures enacted by local governments to slow the rate of infection and also the effects stay-at-home orders had on infrastructure systems, communities, and the environment.
State of the Bay: A Characterization of the Galveston Bay Ecosystem

This website provides data describing Galveston Bay and its surrounding watershed, use the navigation area to explore the status, trends, and indicators of bay health that interest you.
Don’t Trash a Good Thing

The goal of this project is to envision a region, free from trash and plastic pollution that impacts our bayous, lakes and rivers that lead to Galveston Bay.
Double Bayou Watershed Protection Plan

The Double Bayou Watershed Protection Plan (WPP) is a locally-developed, voluntary watershed management plan that helps to restore and protect water quality.
Forests and Floods

HARC’s Forests and Floods project is funded by the Texas A&M Forest Service. The initiative compiles and develops data to investigate the role that trees, forest, and canopy cover play in flood mitigation.
City of Houston Climate Action Plan

HARC worked in partnership with the City of Houston to develop the city’s Climate Action Plan, a roadmap to bring Houston closer to a carbon-neutral future.
Galveston Bay Report Card

The Galveston Bay Report Card is a citizen-driven, science-based grading system supported by Houston Endowment and the EPA Gulf of Mexico Program.
County & Watershed Statistics

This dataset includes Polygons of county and watershed statistics..
USGS NLCD Imperviousness 2016

This dataset includes USGS NLCD Impervious Cover for Texas 2016.
USGS NLCD Imperviousness 2011

This dataset includes USGS NLCD Impervious Cover for Texas 2011.
USGS NLCD Imperviousness 2006

This dataset includes USGS NLCD Impervious Cover for Texas 2006.
USGS NLCD Imperviousness 2001

This dataset includes USGS NLCD Impervious Cover for Texas 2001.
NOAA CCAP Land Cover 2016 22-Class

This dataset includes NOAA CCAP Land Cover for Texas Gulf Coast 2016 22-Class.
NOAA CCAP Land Cover 2010 22-Class

This dataset includes NOAA CCAP Land Cover for Texas Gulf Coast 2010 22-Class.
NOAA CCAP Land Cover 2006 22-Class

This dataset includes NOAA CCAP Land Cover for Texas Gulf Coast 2006 22-Class.
NOAA CCAP Land Cover 2001 22-Class

This dataset includes NOAA CCAP Land Cover for Texas Gulf Coast 2001 22-Class.
NOAA CCAP Land Cover 1996 22-Class

This dataset includes NOAA CCAP Land Cover 1996 22-Class.
Hurricane Harvey Temperature & Salinity

This dataset includes Hurricane Harvey water temperature and salinity as shown in Hurricane Harvey app.
Hurricane Harvey Power Outages by Zip Code

This dataset includes Hurricane Harvey power outages by zip code as shown in Hurricane Harvey app.
Hurricane Harvey Ozone Animation

This dataset includes Hurricane Harvery Ozone visualization as shown in Hurricane Harvey app.
Hurricane Harvey Ozone

This dataset includes Hurricane Harvey Ozone readings as shown in Hurricane Harvey app.
Hurricane Harvey Hazardous Releases

This dataset includes Hurricane Harvey hazardous releases as shown in Hurricane Harvey app.
Hurricane Harvey Flow

This dataset includes Hurricane Harvey flow as shown in Hurricane Harvey app.
Hurricane Harvey FEMA Modeled Damages

This dataset includes Hurricane Harvey FEMA modeled damages as shown in Hurricane Harvey app.
Hurricane Harvey BTEX Animation

This dataset includes Hurricane Harvey BTEX data visualization as shown in Hurricane Harvey app.
Hurricane Harvey BTEX

This dataset includes Hurricane Harvey BTEX data as shown in Hurricane Harvey app.
Superfund Sites

This dataset includes Texas Superfund sites provided by Texas Commission on Environmental Quality used in Hurricane Harvey app.
USGS HUC Texas Watershed Boundaries

This dataset includes USGS HUC polygon watershed boundaries for HUC6, 8, 10, and 12 levels.
TWDB Texas River Basins

This dataset includes Texas Water Development Board polygon boundaries of Texas rivers and basins.
H-GAC Eco Logical Features

This dataset includes eco-logical polygons from the H-GAC Eco-Logical assessement project circa 2008.
Aquatic and Marine Litter and Debris

HARC research team will work with innovative technology methods utilizing Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and spatial analysis to analyze feasibility of debris patterns and hot spots within the region’s waterways.
Galveston Bay Estuary Program Watershed Boundaries

This dataset includes polygons of Galveston Bay Estuary Program watershed boundaries.
US DOE Power Plants

This dataset provides US Department of Energy Power Plant locations.
ERCOT Power Demand

This dataset includes ERCOT Zone loading power demand data used in Hurricane Harvey story map application.
Sustainability of Engineered Rivers in Arid Lands (SERIDAS)

SERIDAS studies both the benefits and risks of river engineering and how physical and and social drivers of change may predict an engineered river's functioning in 2040 and in 2060.
Flaring Issues, Solutions, and Technologies (F.I.S.T.)

HARC launched the Flaring Issues, Solutions and Technologies (FIST) 2019 project in late 2018 with the objective of evaluating the current state of technologies addressing flaring of natural gas at wells sites.
Powered for Good

Powered for Good is an initiative to design and assist in the implementation of clean, cheap electricity offerings for the approximately two and a half million low income households in Texas that can choose their electricity provider.
Houston Harris Heat Action Team

The Houston Harris Heat Action team is a community heat-mapping project that brings together local volunteers, public and private organizations, universities, and non-profit organizations to co-produce heat maps.
Texas Environmental Research Consortium

The TERC Air Quality Research Program (AQR) was established in 2002 by stakeholders who were focused on getting the best available science to identify cost effective solutions to the ozone problems in the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria (HGB) area.
Pythias | Climate Risk Analytics

Pythias is a tool to improve the ability of governments, businesses, and communities to anticipate future climate impacts.
Planning for Community Resilience

This toolkit includes recent examples of Climate Adaptation Plans and information includes strategic directions to apply to the City of Houston as a model.
Texas Solar Calculator

HARC, in partnership with the State Energy Conservation Office (SECO), has developed the Texas solar calculator to help you find out. It is easy to use and requires only a few inputs by you
Distributed Generation Interconnection Tool for Texas

This tool is a step-by-step guide on how to interconnect a 10 MW or larger distributed generation or “generation resource” to the ERCOT transmission grid. This tool can help ensure a successful and timely interconnection process from beginning to end.
PM2.5 Reduction Scenarios

This application provides information about primary fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and includes the amounts and sources of PM2.5 that can be found as well as various controls that can be applied to achieve the desired reductions.
TX-PACE Energy and Emissions Tracker

TX-PACE is a voluntary financing tool that helps owners of existing commercial, non-profit, industrial, and multifamily (5+ unit) properties invest in energy efficiency, water conservation and distributed generation improvements.
Texas Residential Passive Survivability

In partnership Texas’s State Energy Conservation Office, this online tool serves home owners as a resource to maintain, build, or renovate homes to increase energy efficiency and sustainability.
Summarizing Hurricane Harvey’s Environmental Impacts

After Hurricane Harvey, HARC mobilized swiftly to acquire and process data about the flooding and related environmental impacts, such as storm-related spills, pollutants, Superfund site impacts, water quality, air quality, and power generation.

Texas Energy-Water Nexus

This story map features a discussion of Texas energy and water resources, how the 2011 drought became the driest on record, presented with interactive content and dynamic maps.
The Stormwater Connection from Rain to Recreation

This interactive story map from HARC shares information on land use types and the unique interaction with storm water (rain water plus surface water runoff) each has in our region.
HARC Building and Habitat

This interactive tool allows you to identify 54 plant species including natives on HARC's campus.
Analysis of the Hurricane Ike Storm Surge and Waves

After Hurricane Ike in 2008, HARC researchers conducted an analysis of storm surge and wave impacts on land and studied ways to use breakwater islands to mitigate these effects.