Participatory Groundwater Modeling in the Southern Chicago Region
What happens to our local water supply if we add A New Well?
What direction does contaminated groundwater move, and can we detect a disturbance in the flow?
How does drought strike back at our water resources?
For Chicago Water Week—occurring Monday, May the Fourth—join us for a two-hour participatory groundwater modeling event on Zoom, focused on Chicago’s South Suburbs. This will be part presentation, part live workshop, and part low-stakes science adventure, so please plan on relaxing with a cup of coffee (or blue milk). We will use a short survey to prompt a series of questions and experiments with a fast-running, simple groundwater model built in Jupyter Notebook, proving that these are the models you’re looking for.
The session will focus on making groundwater modeling feel accessible, interactive, and genuinely useful. We aim to move modeling away from the "dark side" of the mysterious black box and into a space where changing inputs and assumptions can affect results in real time.
Grounding the discussion in water questions relevant to the South Suburbs, this event will be of interest to researchers, water professionals, advocates, students, and curious members of the public who want to learn more about groundwater and how participatory approaches can support water science and decision-making.
Speakers will be Vlad Iordache and Daniel Abrams from the Illinois State Water Survey at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
This event is affiliated with Chicago Water Week, presented by Current.