About

Professor Brian Deal is actively engaged in teaching and research related to sustainability and planning. His scholarship includes the study of planning from an energy conservation perspective, urban land use transformation and modeling, planning for climate change, and approaches that enable communities to make better, more sustainable decisions. He is the founder of the Illinois Smart Energy Design Assistance Center (SEDAC) and serves as the Director of the Landuse Evolution and Impact Assessment Model (LEAM) laboratory. His educational background includes a BS in Architectural Studies, an MA in Architecture, and a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning, all from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Research topics

• Geography
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Engineering
• Computer Science
• Environmental planning
• Data science
• Socioeconomics
• Business
• World Wide Web
• Public economics
• Economics
• Cartography
• Demographic economics
• Environmental science
• Economic growth
• Civil engineering
• Regional science
• Meteorology
• Environmental resource management
• Transport engineering

Selected publications

• An innovative approach to urban parks and perception: a cross-cultural analysis using big and small data

  Discover Cities · 2025-03-31 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Urban parks provide essential benefits that enhance human well-being and quality of life. This study integrates big data (online reviews, images) and small data (survey results) with large language models (LLMs) and object detection algorithms to analyze public perceptions of urban parks in Stockholm, New York, and Shanghai. LLMs were employed for sentiment analysis and keyword extraction from 62,724 online reviews, enabling the identification of key environmental features influencing visitor satisfaction. Concurrently, the YOLO v11 object detection model analyzed 111,469 images to quantify the presence of natural and built features, such as greenery, water bodies, and recreational facilities. Findings reveal that online satisfaction scores are lower than survey-based scores in Stockholm (0.661 vs. 0.774) and Shanghai (0.626 vs. 0.845), indicating a negativity bias in online reviews. In contrast, New York’s online (0.612) and survey (0.610) scores align closely, suggesting a broader representation of perspectives. Feature analysis shows greenery, flowers, and recreational facilities consistently enhance satisfaction, while noise and uncleanliness reduce it. Cultural differences emerge: small animals significantly improve perceptions in New York, whereas excessive liveliness lowers satisfaction in Shanghai due to crowding concerns. By examining 102 parks across these cities, this study highlights the effectiveness of AI-driven, multi-source data analysis in identifying universal and culturally specific park preferences. These insights can guide data-informed urban park management strategies, improving accessibility and visitor experiences globally.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Unraveling urban plant diversity: The independent effects of plant species richness and greenness on health

  Urban forestry & urban greening · 2025-08-30 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Urban green spaces are essential for the well-being of both wildlife and humans, with numerous studies reporting positive associations between plant diversity and health outcomes. The specific impact of plant species richness on health, however, is frequently confounded by overall vegetation cover. Additionally, highly vegetated spaces can sometimes be linked to negative health outcomes. This study examined the independent effects of plant species richness and green view levels on human health, including mental fatigue and stress, and the extent to which these effects persist with green view levels adjusted. We also assessed the extent to which individual characteristics moderate these relationships. Using an experimental design, we displayed simulated scenes of varying levels of plant species richness and green views via videos to assess changes in acute attentional capacity, psychological stress (e.g., emotions), and physiological stress (e.g., heart rate, heart rate variability, and skin conductance) before and after the exposure. With the data from 154 participants, our results indicated that while green views had a positive effect on measures of relaxation, plant species richness variations had no impact. Moreover, individual characteristics, including long-term attentional functioning, stress, and nature relatedness, showed moderation effects in the relationships between plant diversity and health outcomes. Future research should address the intensity of the intervention and consider the appropriateness of research tools for various population groups to discern any causal relationship between urban plant species richness and human health.

  PublisherDOI

• Data-Driven Multi-Scale Integration of Transportation Networks and Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Landscape Infrastructure Planning

  Land · 2025-04-09 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  This study introduces a novel multi-scale framework for analyzing transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions across Illinois from a landscape infrastructure perspective. By integrating county-level, census tract, and high-resolution (30 × 30 m) data of road, rail, and aviation emissions, the research reveals distinct landscape corridor effects where major transportation routes create linear zones of elevated rural emissions connecting urban centers. While urban areas demonstrate higher total emissions, rural regions show higher tract-level and per capita emission intensities along transportation corridors. The extensive available land in rural areas, particularly along these high-emission corridors, presents significant opportunities for strategic green infrastructure deployment and mitigation. The study establishes a technical foundation for data-driven green infrastructure planning by identifying optimal locations for landscape interventions based on emission patterns. This research advances the integration of transportation and landscape planning by providing actionable insights for policymakers and designers working to mitigate climate impacts through strategic green infrastructure and nature-based solutions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Integrating Land-Use Modeling with Coastal Landscape Interventions: A Framework for Climate Adaptation Planning in Dalian, China

  Sustainability · 2025-12-30

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Coastal cities face escalating flood risk under sea-level rise, yet landscape-based adaptation strategies often remain speculative and weakly connected to the accessibility and economic constraints that shape sustainable urban development. This study developed a modeling-to-design framework that translates coupled climate and land-use projections into implementable landscape interventions, through planning-level spatial allocation, using Dalian, China as a case study under “middle of the road” (SSP2-4.5) climate conditions. The framework integrates the Land-use Evolution and Assessment Model (LEAM) with connected-bathtub flood modeling to evaluate whether strategic landscape design can redirect development away from flood-prone zones while accommodating projected growth and maintaining accessibility to employment and services. Interventions—protective wetland restoration (810 km2) and blue–green corridors (8 km2)—derived from a meta-synthesis of implemented coastal projects were operationalized as LEAM spatial constraints. Our results show that residential development can be redirected away from coastal risk with 100% demand satisfaction and elimination of moderate-risk allocations. Cropland demand was fully accommodated. In contrast, commercial development experienced 99.8% reduction under strict coastal protection, reflecting locational dependence on port-adjacent sites. This modeling-to-design framework offers a transferable approach to quantifying where landscape interventions succeed, where they face barriers, and where complementary measures are required, supporting decision-making that balances environmental protection, economic function, and social accessibility in sustainable coastal development.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• AI-Driven Discovery Reveals Critical Thresholds and Persistent Inequities in Urban Sustainability

  Research Square · 2025-11-18

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Adaptive Supervisory Control for Optimizing Buildings’ Energy Flexibility with Hybrid Hvac Systems Under Variable Climates and Operation Conditions

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Bridging Design and Climate Realities: A Meta-Synthesis of Coastal Landscape Interventions and Climate Integration

  Land · 2025-08-23 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  This paper is aimed at landscape managers and designers. It looks at 123 real-world coastal landscape projects and organizes them into clear design categories, i.e., wetland restoration, hybrid infrastructure, or urban green spaces. We looked at how these projects were framed (whether they focused on climate adaptation, flood protection, or other goals) and how they tracked performance. We are hoping to bring some clarity to a very scattered field, helping us to see patterns in what is actually being carried out in terms of landscape interventions and increasing sea levels. We are hoping to provide a practical reference for making better, more climate-responsive design decisions. Coastal cities face escalating climate-driven threats from increasing sea levels and storm surges to urban heat islands. These threats are driving increased interest in nature-based solutions (NbSs) as green adaptive alternatives to traditional gray infrastructure. Despite an abundance of individual case studies, there have been few systematic syntheses aimed at landscape designers and managers linking design typologies, project framing, and performance outcomes. This study addresses this gap through a meta-synthesis of 123 implemented coastal landscape interventions aimed directly at landscape-oriented research and professions. Flood risk reduction was the dominant framing strategy (30.9%), followed by climate resilience (24.4%). Critical evidence gaps emerged—only 1.6% employed integrated monitoring approaches, 30.1% provided ambiguous performance documentation, and mean monitoring quality scored 0.89 out of 5.0. While 95.9% of the projects acknowledged SLR as a driver, only 4.1% explicitly integrated climate projections into design parameters. Community monitoring approaches demonstrated significantly higher ecosystem service integration, particularly cultural services (36.4% vs. 6.9%, p<0.001), and enhanced monitoring quality (mean score 1.64 vs. 0.76, p<0.001). Implementation barriers spanned technical constraints, institutional fragmentation, and data limitations, each affecting 20.3% of projects. Geographic analysis revealed evidence generation inequities, with systematic underrepresentation of high-risk regions (Africa: 4.1%; Latin America: 2.4%) versus concentration in well-resourced areas (North America: 27.6%; Europe: 17.1%).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Street-level climate action: a landscape based approach to investigate transportation emissions and green infrastructure solutions

  Frontiers in Built Environment · 2025-09-10 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  While climate change demands urgent global action, emission reduction effectiveness hinges on local implementation. This study develops a landscape planning framework for analyzing street-level transportation emissions using integrated geospatial analysis, transportation analytics, and landscape metrics. Using 2016 NLCD land cover data, 2021 census data, and 2023 IDOT traffic data for Cook County, Illinois, we quantify transportation emissions at a fine scale and identify local mitigation opportunities. Our results indicate that arterial roads generate 52.04% of transportation emissions despite lower per-meter intensity than highways. Shannon’s entropy (land use fragmentation measure) reveals downtown districts (0.586) have lower per capita emissions than fragmented suburban areas (0.951). Married households correlate with higher emissions (r = 0.302, p < 0.001) while renter-occupied areas show lower emissions (r = −0.294, p < 0.001). We also find that strategic green infrastructure implementation along arterial corridors could sequester at least 360,000 tons CO 2 annually. This framework provides actionable strategies for translating global climate goals into neighborhood-scale interventions by integrating transportation planning with ecosystem services.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Multi-Objective Optimization of the Layout of Tall Building Sites in Dense Urban Configurations for Improved Sustainability Outcomes

  Architecture · 2024-12-25 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Multi-objective evolutionary algorithms have long been used by architects to find objective solutions to complex building problems involving trade-offs implicit in sustainable building design. At a larger scale, urban designers have created a variety of tools to improve sustainability in urban-and-larger scale design. However, to date, fewer studies have focused on improving sustainability outcomes at the “in between” scale of the neighborhood and urban site. Existing scholarship on optimization at this scale has tended to take a narrow view of sustainability. We seek to expand the implementation of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms to this sometimes overlooked scale while taking a broad view of sustainability which includes social, environmental, and economic design factors. In doing so, we argue this optimization method is uniquely well suited to help designers balance the sometimes competing demands of multiple axes of sustainability which are applicable to design at this larger-than-building scale. In demonstrating the application of such an algorithm to a hypothetical problem in Chicago, we find the method offers a promising way of narrowing potential design solutions. Finally, we discuss the suitability of the solutions generated, the virtues and shortcomings of the method, and offer areas for future study.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Wetland Carbon Dynamics in Illinois: Implications for Landscape Architectural Practice

  Sustainability · 2024-12-20 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Wetlands play a crucial role in carbon sequestration. The integration of wetland carbon dynamics into landscape architecture, however, has been challenging, mainly due to gaps between scientific knowledge and landscape practice norms. While the carbon performance of different wetland types is well established in the ecological sciences literature, our study pioneers the translation of this scientific understanding into actionable landscape design guidance. We achieve this through a comprehensive, spatially explicit analysis of wetland carbon dynamics using 2024 National Wetlands Inventory data and other spatial datasets. We analyze carbon flux rates across 13 distinct wetland types in Illinois to help quantify useful information related to designing for carbon outcomes. Our analysis reveals that in Illinois, bottomland forests function as primary carbon sinks (709,462 MtC/year), while perennial deepwater rivers act as significant carbon emitters (−2,573,586 MtC/year). We also identify a notable north–south gradient in sequestration capacity, that helps demonstrate how regional factors influence wetland and other stormwater management design strategies. The work provides landscape architects with evidence-based parameters for evaluating carbon sequestration potential in wetland design decisions, while also acknowledging the need to balance carbon goals with other ecosystem services. This research advances the profession’s capacity to move beyond generic sustainable design principles toward quantifiable climate-responsive solutions, helping landscape architects make informed decisions about wetland type selection and placement in the context of climate change mitigation.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Haozhi Pan

  Shanghai Jiao Tong University

  26 shared

• Zahra Kalantari

  KTH Royal Institute of Technology

  13 shared

• Yoonshin Kwak

  Gachon University

  12 shared

• Varkki Pallathucheril

  American University of Sharjah

  11 shared

• Yexuan Gu

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  10 shared

• Xuesong Zhang

  China Agricultural University

  10 shared

• Georgia Destouni

  Stockholm University

  9 shared

• Ji-Lu Zheng

  8 shared

Labs

• Department of Landscape ArchitecturePI