A multi-institution collaboration, including Northwestern University, received $25 million over five years from the US Department of Energy (DOE) to study urban climate change, climate resilience and environmental justice in a street, neighborhood and regional scale.
With the new funding, the group will establish Community Research on Climate and Urban Science (CROCUS), an Urban Integrated Field Laboratory (IFL) based in Chicago. By better understanding urban climate and energy impacts, CROCUS will help climate-vulnerable communities become more resilient to the adverse effects of climate change.
Like many other US cities, Chicago has experienced climate disruption in the form of extreme weather, floods, droughts and heat waves. Researchers will examine how trees, open space, buildings and Lake Michigan shape the city’s climate. And, because no two neighborhoods are the same, researchers build detailed climate models to predict climate impacts in areas as small as 1 square mile, enabling communities to identify neighborhood level solutions.
As leaders in urban water-related research, Northwestern researchers will monitor the environment with novel, artificial intelligence-enabled sensors that provide robust, real-time data and respond to extreme weather events. Using this data, researchers will study the interactions between microclimate, stormwater dynamics, residential areas and green spaces.
“This work will help us provide new solutions for reducing urban flooding, which greatly affects many neighborhoods throughout Chicago,” said Northwestern’s Aaron Packman, urban water lead for CROCUS. . “We will learn how nature-based solutions such as community green spaces and green infrastructure can improve resilience to climate change and reduce vulnerability to extreme weather.”
A world-renowned water expert, Packman is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and founding director of the Center for Water Research. William Miller, a McCormick professor of chemical and biological engineering and director of the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience, is Northwestern’s co-lead with Packman.
CROCUS is building on three recent projects funded by the National Science Foundation at Northwestern to improve resilience to climate change: SAGE, a national effort to develop and implement smart sensors for monitoring the climate, traffic and ecosystems; Systems Approaches for Vulnerability Evaluation and Urban Resilience (SAVEUR), which aims to reduce the effects of extreme weather in cities; and Sustainable Urban Systems: Predictive, Interconnected, Resilient and Evolving (SUSPIRE), a series of urban sustainability workshops that address how climate change, natural, technological and social disturbances are changing Chicago and other cities in the Great Lakes.
“This work will help us provide new solutions for reducing urban flooding, which affects many neighborhoods throughout Chicago.” – Aaron Packman, civil and environmental engineer
Led by Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Chicago, CROCUS partners with local and regional colleges and universities to recruit and train the next generation of climate scientists. CROCUS will provide educational and workforce development opportunities to students representing a wide range of institutions, including minority-serving institutions and historically Black colleges and universities. Participating colleges and universities are:
- Chicago State University
- Chicago City Colleges
- North Carolina A&T State University
- University of Northeastern Illinois
- Northwestern University
- University of Notre Dame
- University of Chicago
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- University of Texas-Austin
- Washington University-St. Louis
CROCUS researchers will engage with community-based organizations on the South and West sides of Chicago. This collaboration enables community members to share their needs and concerns as they work alongside researchers to transition neighborhoods to clean energy and nature-based climate solutions. Community partners include:
- Blacks on the Green (Woodlawn)
- Greater Chatham Initiative (Chatham)
- Puerto Rican Agenda (Humboldt Park)
- Metropolitan Mayors Caucus
While Chicago is the focus of the study, the new insights and lessons learned will help researchers create a blueprint to help other cities across the country and around the world as they work to become resilient. -or the climate.
“If we understand the risks caused by climate change, we can respond to them in a fair, equitable and sustainable way,” said Cristina Negri, director of Argonne National Laboratory’s Environmental Sciences Division and leader of CROCUS. “We can help neighborhoods, governments and businesses adapt to risks, avoid the worst consequences and recover faster from the impacts of our changing climate. We’re all in this together.”
CROCUS is funded by the Biological and Environmental Research program of the DOE’s Office of Science.
