Students explore coastal housing challenges
Four students from the UGA College of Engineering visited UGAMI last week as part of a project focused on exploring new housing options for visiting researchers. The project is part of their capstone senior design course, a year-long class that provides students an opportunity to work on a real-world engineering challenge with a client – in this case, the Marine Institute. Working with a larger interdisciplinary research team from UGA, the students’ broader goal is to consider how their designs could offer an affordable alternative to housing in coastal Georgia and other southeastern states where strong wind events and sea level rise are significant challenges.
In addition to engineering, the interdisciplinary team includes colleagues from the College of Environment and Design, the Department of Geography, the Department of Marine Sciences, the Carl Vinson Institute of Government, Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, the Office of Research, and the Office of the University Architect.
The engineering students will conduct their initial research and develop design alternatives during the current semester, then refine their concepts this spring based on feedback from the interdisciplinary research team. In April 2022, the capstone team will deliver a set of engineering drawings to the Marine Institute that will include site plans and details of their proposed resilient coastal homes.
We can’t wait to see what they come up with!
