CENSAM is a research center in Environmental Sciences. Our goals are to develop and deploy new environmental sensor technologies and to incorporate data from these and other sources into representations of the natural and built environment that are linked across spatial scales, from an individual constructed facility to the meso-scale of the city-state, the regional ocean and atmosphere and the global climate.

Urban research includes the thermal coupling between buildings and urban atmostphere that produces the urban heat island effect, investigations of urban air and water quality, and the development of wireless sensor networks to monitor and control urban systems.

Marine investigations include coastal sediment transport and the development of fully automated chemical sensing systems for deployment in autonomous marine vehicles, which incorporate elements of biomimicy and have advanced navigational and mapping facilities.

Climate studies include predictions of regional climate change at decadal time scales, field-based investigations of tropical peat lands and carbon emissions associated with their destruction, and paleoclimate investigations based on corals that act as long-term sensors of chemical chamges in the marine environment.