The Center for Applied Collaboration on Human Environments (CACHE), housed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, focuses on identifying and mitigating environmental consequences caused by and found within households, communities, and cities. Our special emphasis is the profundity of the commonplace: the notion that everyday actions and items — often considered too mundane for academic study — have deep and long-lasting impacts on humans, their surroundings, and the environment. Our ultimate goals are to chart plausible paths toward a better future, and to provide tools and understanding that allow people to walk those paths.

A distinctive feature of CACHE is the integration of three contrasting, and complementary, initiatives. SPHERE examines the under-explored environment in United States residences with measurements and access approaches designed for scaling-up. The focus of GRAICES is basic services for households and communities around the world, especially in rural areas. SIMBAS develops future scenarios by leveraging the understanding of plausibility gained from SPHERE and GRAICES. Embedded in each of the three initiatives is a movement toward multidisciplinary integration of solutions and perspectives from physical and social sciences.

This Center is supported by the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE), the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.