Funded in Spring 2020, this project aims to enhance water and energy security and resilience in urban systems, agricultural applications, and military bases by using groundwater resources and geothermal energy as an integrated system. Potential applications will improve military readiness and urban resilience to climate change by providing reliable indoor climate control and uninterrupted access to water.

Funded in Summer 2020, this project seeks to expand the sustainability and longevity of structural engineering by installing an aluminum bicycle canopy on the Engineering Quad.

Sustainability isn’t just happening “out there;” it’s a consideration every day right here on our campus. By using our own facilities and community as a miniature model of the world at large, we can learn things that will make this campus better, but also make the world better.

Launched in February 2018, iSEE’s Living Lab program is designed to link campus sustainability targets to national and global sustainability, energy, and environment challenges.

While the 2017 Campus Master Plan provides an overall vision for a sustainable campus, the plan prioritizes buildings over landscapes. There is no cohesive vision for resilient campus landscapes and limited guidelines for ensuring landscapes’ long-term success. F&S is developing a Landscape Master Plan including a shared vision for the overall campus landscape and specific design guidelines. This will include establishing a steering committee, hiring an external landscape architecture firm, and initiating extensive public and stakeholder engagement.

The Champaign County Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan (CCHMP) identifies and prioritizes community policies, actions and tools to implement in order to reduce potential risk and potential for future losses associated with the occurrence of selected natural and technical hazards. The CCHMP is developed to be useful to each participating jurisdiction. The plan can be used to increase awareness of potential natural hazards and technical hazards; and to understand potential losses from hazard events.

The Multimodal Corridor Enhancement (MCORE) project requires the Champaign-Urbana Urbanized AreaTransportation Study (CUUATS) partners to monitor the pedestrian and bicycle counts following the completion of the project. This requirement is to understand the increased walking and bicycling activities at the twelve predetermined corridors. Champaign County Regional Planning Commission (CCRPC) collected pedestrian and cycling counts at these locations before the MCORE project. These twelve corridors/intersections are

Earth Month is a great opportunity to get involved in projects throughout the month of April. 

Check out the Sustainability Calendar for fun and virtual events!

Dining Services at University Housing is certified as a Green Restaurant by the Green Restaurant Association. Great job, Dining! 

Yanfeng Ouyang (Professor), Shelly Zhang (Professor), and their PhD students from the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering are collaborating with Facilities and Services to develop a model to optimize the pedestrian flow on the Quad Day 2020.

The Design for America students are leading a project to develop solutions to reduce plastic film waste.  They have contacted Morgan White at F&S and BK Sharma at ISTC to provide guidance as faculty advisors.