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Dr. Steven French is a Professor of City and Regional Planning and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Architecture.  He joined Georgia Tech in 1992 as the Director of the City Planning Program and served in that position through 1999.  He directed the Center for Geographic Information Systems from 1997-2011.  He was appointed Associate Dean for Research for the College of Architecture in July 2009. His teaching and research activities focus on sustainable urban development, land use planning, GIS applications and natural hazard risk assessment. Over the past twenty-five years, Dr. French has been the Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on more than 70 research projects. Dr. French has participated in a number of National Science Foundation projects dealing with flood and earthquake hazards.  He was the Social Science Thrust Leader for the Mid-America Earthquake Center, where he was also the principal investigator on a series of projects that used advanced technology to create GIS-based building inventories and developed innovative approaches to model the social and economic consequences of earthquakes and other natural hazards.

Dr. French is the author or co-author of more than 25 journal articles and four books. He was the co-author of an article in the Journal of the American Planning Association on the future of GIS in city and regional planningand co-edited Risk Assessment, Modeling and Decision Support (Springer, 2008).  He is also a lead contributor to the EPRI-GTC methodology for siting overhead electric transmission lines.

Dr. French holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  In 1987-88, Dr. French served as the Visiting Professor of Resources Planning in the Civil Engineering Department at Stanford University.  He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners. 

Educational Background
1980 - Ph.D. (City and Regional Planning), University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
1973 - Master of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Colorado - Denver 
1971 - B.A. with Honors (Economics), University of Virginia

Fields

• Sustainable Urban Development
• Geographic Information System Applications
• Earthquake and Flood Hazard Analysis and Mitigation
• Modeling Urban Development Impacts

The opportunities in green buildings, alternative energy, sustainability, health care, smart growth and spatial and building information technologies have never been greater.  The topics that are central to the College of Architecture are currently at the forefront of the research agenda of the nation and the Institute.  Georgia Tech can and should lead the way in linking design with cutting edge science and engineering research.  To do this we need to strengthen the research support infrastructure within the college, build an incentive structure that supports research and develop stronger interdisciplinary ties within the college and, more importantly, to other units across campus.  

In terms of my own research agenda I intend to focus on the development of urban models that can be used to understand and implement more sustainable urban development. This work will draw on my  earlier work on land use modeling, impact assessment, GIS and natural hazards.

Books

• Bostrom, A., French, S., & Gottlieb, S. (2008). Risk Assessment, Modeling and Decision Support: Strategic Decisions. New York: Springer.

Recent Publications

• Yang, Jiawen, Steve French, Xingyou Zhang, James Holt. The Travel-Obesity Connection: an Investigation from the Perspective of Individual Time Use and Energy Expenditure. Environment and Planning B. in press.
• Zafer Defne, Kevin A. Haas, Hermann M. Fritz, Lide Jiang, Steven P. French, Xuan Shi, Brennan T. Smith, Vincent S. Neary, Kevin M. Stewart. (2012) National geodatabase of tidal stream power resource in USA. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 16 (2012) 3326– 3338.
• Jiawen Yang, Steven French, James Holt & Xingyou Zhang (2012): Measuring the Structure of U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 1970–2000, Journal of the American Planning Association, 78:2, 197-209.
• French, S., Lee, D., & Anderson, K. (2010). Estimating the Social and Economic Consequences of Natural Hazards: Fiscal Impact Example. Natural Hazards Review, 11, 49. doi:10.1061/(ASCE)1527-6988(2010)11:2(49)
• Sahar, L., Muthukumar, S., & French, S. (2010). Using Aerial Imagery and GIS in Automated Building Footprint Extraction and Shape Recognition for Earthquake Risk Assessment of Urban Inventories. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 48(9), 1-10. doi:10.1109/TGRS.2010.2047260
• Xu, M., Crittenden, J., Chen, Y., Thomas, V., Noonan, D., Desroches, R., Brown, M.A., and French, S.P. (2010). Gigaton Problems Need Gigaton Solutions. Environ. Sci. Technol, 44(11), 4037-4041. doi:10.1021/es903306e
• Lee, S., & French, S. (2009). Regional Impervious Surface Estimation: An Urban Heat Island Application. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 52(4), 477-496. doi:10.1080/09640560902868207
• Drummond, W., & French, S. (2008). The Future of GIS in Planning: Converging Technologies and Diverging Interests. Journal of the American Planning Association, 74(2), 161-174. doi:10.1007/s11116-007-9148-2
• Steven French, Gayle Houston, Christy Johnson and Jesse Glasgow. 2008. EPRI-GTC Tailored Collaboration Project: A Standardized Methodology for Siting Overhead Electric Transmission Lines in J. Goodrich-Mahoney, L. Abrahamson, J. Ballard and S. Tikalsky (Eds.) The Eighth International Symposium on Environmental Concerns in Rights-of-Way Management: New York: Elsevier.
• Leigh, N., Realff, M., Ai, N., French, S., Ross, C., & Bras, B. (2007). Modeling Obsolete Computer Stock Under Regional Data Constraints: An Atlanta case study. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 51(4), 847-869. doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2007.01.007

Recent Funded Projects

• 2011-2012 Co-Principal Investigator - Georgia Tech Foundation – “Caribbean hazard and mitigation project (CHAMP)”
• 2008, Co-Principal Investigator – U.S. Department of Energy – “Assessment of Energy Production Potential from tidal Streams in the United States” 
• 2008, Principal Investigator – Georgia Technology Authority – “Georgia GIS Data Clearinghouse” 
• 2008, Principal Investigator - University System of Georgia - “Strategic Initiative for Geographic Information Systems”  
• 2007, Co-Principal Investigator – National Science Foundation – “NEESR-Grand Challenge: Simulation of the Seismic Performance of Nonstructural Systems” 
• 2007, Principal Investigator – Georgia Technology Authority – “Georgia GIS Data Clearinghouse” 
• 2007, Principal Investigator - University System of Georgia - “Strategic Initiative for Geographic Information Systems”  

Recent Courses

• CP 6541 – Environmental GIS, Spring 2007 - 2012
• CP 6112 – Introduction to Land Use Planning, Spring 2000 - 2003, Fall 2004 - 2012

Dissertations Supervised

• Dalbyul Lee - 2012 - The Impact of Natural Disasters on Neighborhood Change: Longitudinal Data Analysis
• Ning Ai - 2011 - Challenges of Sustainable Urban Planning: the Case of Municipal Solid Waste Management
• Liora Sahar – 2009 – Using Remote Sensing and GIS Technology for Automated Building Extraction  
• Subrahmanyam Muthukumar – 2008 - The Application of Advanced Inventory Techniques in Urban Inventory Data Development to Earthquake Risk Modeling and Mitigation in Mid-America
• Sugie Lee – 2005 – Metropolitan Growth Patterns' Impact on Intra-Regional Spatial Differentiation and Inner-Ring Suburban Decline: Insights for Smart Growth

Current PhD Students

• Sangwoo "Marty" Sung
• Abimbola Omiyale