The Department of Construction Management had two faculty named among the selection of three Global Challenges Research Teams and two Resident Faculty Fellows from a competitive field of proposals for the School of Global Environmental Sustainability (SoGES).

The awards are intended to encourage interdisciplinary understanding of complex global sustainability issues, foster collaborative cross-campus partnerships, and support sustainability research at CSU. New this year, the Global Challenges Research Teams will be funded for not one, but two years with each team receiving $30,000 total. The longer timeframe allows teams to better execute planned work and articulate accomplishments.

Resilient Industry Supply Chains (RISC)
Principal Investigators:

• Erin Arneson, Department of Construction Management
• Rodolfo Valdes-Vasquez, Department of Construction Management
• Hussam Mahmoud, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Climate change amplifies the risk of extreme weather and disaster events, transforming where and how people conduct business around the world. The characteristics that make modern supply chains speedy and cost-effective (e.g. global resource networks, specialized inputs produced in specific geographic locations, and reduced inventories as part of just-in-time production strategies) render global supply chains more susceptible to disaster disruptions. Therefore, to maintain continued economic growth, U.S. industries must adapt their global supply chains to become more sustainable and resilient to disaster disruptions.

This project will look at the U.S. roofing industry and develop a framework for empirically assessing its resilience. The team will collect data from regional, national, and global roofing industry supply chains and develop a working geospatial model to predict how supply chain disruptions will affect the U.S. roofing industry. The primary objective of this GCRT is to share these findings with the public via an interactive, online map and to write peer-reviewed papers for conferences and journal publication.

The School of Global Environmental Sustainability is at the core of a growing number of exciting sustainability initiatives in research, education, and engagement at Colorado State University. SoGES serves as a hub to connect CSU’s community of scholars and practitioners interested in applying interdisciplinary perspectives to large-scale environmental, economic, and social questions not easily addressed through traditional approaches.

The Department of Construction Management is part of CSU’s College of Health and Human Sciences.