Global & Community Engagement

 

RCRI faculty and student affiliates have been working in the US, Africa and Central and South America to design and build stronger and more affordable buildings, assist in understanding how to engage in sustainable urban development, make communities safer, and conduct environmental management assessments for historic preservation sites. It engages with California communities to help protect resources, regenerate areas, make people-oriented plans and improve environmental quality.

How RCRI Links & Provides Value to Outside Clients & Communities

The core value to clients is the ability to provide innovative thinking, a solution-based approach to problems, the use of integrated teams of expertise, access the latest knowledge, test concepts and materials, tailor projects to specific needs.  This can be accomplished on a modest cost basis for projects performed, including research and preparation by supervised students.

In addition to the projects developed by affiliated faculty, we link to the outside clients in various ways.  First, through fee for service agreements where RCRI is most appropriate to conduct the activity.  Second, through grants/contracts that involve faculty and selected groups of students. Third, through grants that merges coursework and faculty with a client-centered problem or task.   Fourth, through an agreement to find faculty and students who can address a problem on a materials and expenses cost basis.

An example of these linkages include a local government needing support to mount a Smart Growth process in their area requiring GIS maps, student support  for outreach, and analysis of the community input.  Another example is putting together a pre-project environmental assessment for a large project area that requires a suitability analysis to be conducted. A third example is applying Integrated Project Delivery techniques to test the cost and time-savings for a set of proposed buildings. This work is conducted in a course where students and faculty from multiple disciplines find multiple solutions. 

Examples of Global and Community Engagement

• Haiti Built Environment Resource Center (pdf), an evolving partnership with the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), Virginia Tech and other collaborations (2011).
• Partnering with the Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI) in developing a disaster theory for use by designers and public policy makers (2010).
• "Building Local Capacity for Long-Term Disaster Resilience" is the theme for the October 2010 issue of the Journal of Disaster Research (Vol. 5, No. 5). This issue includes several articles related to architectural design for lowering seismic risk, building disaster resilience organizations, and land use. RCRI supports this activity. Editor William Siembieda, wrote an article on the Chilean disaster published in this issue. The Journal of Disaster Research is available at www.fujipress.jp. (2010)
• Environmental management plan for the Copan Valley, Honduras, Conservation of a Mayan City Under Stress (2005).