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What is Sustainable and Resilient Natural and Built Environments?

The Sustainable and Resilient Natural and Built Environments track addresses the critical need of promoting the sustainability of the natural and built environment under extreme events, climate change, and socio-economic development and urbanization.

Sustainability is a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged. In other words, a sustainable process meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Resilience refers to the ability of a system to recover from adverse events like wildfires, floods, and hurricanes, as well as long term shifts like rising sea levels and drought.

Students participating in this track will take courses related to system level sustainability and resilience across civil and environmental engineering and other relevant disciplines that fit in the individual student’s backgrounds and area(s) of interest.

Degree Information

Students can earn a Ph.D. degree in civil engineering in the Sustainable and Resilient Natural and Built Environments track.

Doctor of Philosophy

The Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree is a research-oriented degree requiring a minimum of 64 semester credit hours of approved courses and research beyond the Master of Science (M.S.) degree [96 credit hours beyond the Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree]. The university places limitations on these credit hours in addition to the requirements of the Department of Civil Engineering.

A complete discussion of all university requirements is found in the current Texas A&M University Graduate Catalog.