Dr. Cai's research primarily focus on the application of geographic information science and technology (GIST) in disaster resilience and coupled natural-human system modeling. She has worked for a number of research projects funded by National science foundation, Louisiana sea grant, and Coastal protection and restoration authority. Her work employs a diverse spatial analysis tools and data mining methods to evaluate the community resilience to natural hazards, model the interactions between the human and natural systems, and simulate population and land cover changes under certain scenarios.