ISTPP News

In August 2017, Houston suffered catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Harvey. The National Science Foundation has funded a study by an interdisciplinary team of Texas A&M University researchers led by Dr. Ali Mostafavidarani in the Department of Civil Engineering. The team will include Dr. Arnold Vedlitz of the Bush School and Dr. Bryce Hannibal, who is […]

Kent Portney, ISTPP Director, and his co-authors, doctoral student Bassel Daher and Drs. Mohtar, Pistikopoulos, Kaiser and Saad, published their article on STEP solutions to water-energy-food (WEF) Nexus Hotspots in the journal Sustainability. The authors propose using a 3-Filter STEP (Socio-Techno-Economic-Political) framework for identifying planning and management solutions that incorporate multiple layers of bio-physical WEF systems […]

Drs. Paul Kellstedt, Mark Ramirez, Arnold Vedlitz, and Sammy Zahran published their research on value conflict in public opinion related to mitigating climate change. Using national survey data collected as part of an ISTPP NOAA funded project, the authors test the roles of specific issue domain knowledge and general cognitive ability on attitudes toward global warming and […]

Invited by Asian Development Bank and Hunan Innovative Low Carbon Center, Dr. Xinsheng Liu, ISTPP Research Scientist and Assistant Director, attended the Asia-Pacific Forum on Low Carbon Technology in Changsha, China on November 29-30, 2017. Dr. Liu shared a survey-based research that quantitatively examines the geographic variations and socioeconomic determinants of Chinese public concern about […]

“A Micro Model of Problem Definition and Policy Choice: Issue Image, Issue Association, and Policy Support of Power Plants,” a paper by ISTPP researchers Dr. Xinsheng Liu and Dr. Arnold Vedlitz and ISTPP Research Fellow Dr. Scott Robinson has been accepted for publication by Policy Studies Journal. It is available in early view (DOI: 10.1111/psj.12233). In this paper, […]

Dr. Portney, ISTPP Director, shared his research, “Governing the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Solving a Common-Pool Resource Challenge?” with participants of the Ostrom Workshop Colloquium Series at Indiana University. As the invited speaker for the November 13, 2017 workshop, Dr. Portney discussed how emerging natural system research has documented connections between water, energy, and food with an […]

In their study, “Sustainable Cities and Healthy Cities: Are They the Same?”, Dr. Kent Portney, Director of ISTPP, and Dr. Garett Sansom, Associate Director of the Institute for Sustainable Communities, fill a critical gap in the literature on the relationship between sustainability policies and health outcomes. Researchers have theorized that a positive correlation exists between these two […]

The Bush School of Government and Public Service has recently partnered with the Texas A&M University College of Engineering and the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) on a new National Science Foundation funded Engineering Research Center (ERC) on Texas A&M’s campus. While some might see a public policy school’s involvement with an engineering research […]

Dr. Portney recently authored a chapter in the book, Global Soil Security, in which he reported his research on people’s awareness of the agriculture-water nexus. Utilizing data collected from the 2013 National Public Water Survey, conducted by ISTPP, Portney analyzes the relative strength of this awareness and the influence of such on support for actions and policies. […]

David Switzer, ISTPP Predoctoral Research Fellow, and Arnold Vedlitz, Professor and ISTPP Distinguished Research Scholar, have published their research on how worldviews condition the way individuals process information about their local environment. The authors hypothesize that people will have higher perceptions of risk and greater preferences for policy when observed local conditions conform to their […]