On the 30th of October 2025, a team from the Center for Secure Water (C4SW) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign traveled to Peoria Heights, IL to participate in an all-day event organized and led by Ray Lees of the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission. The visit brought together local, regional, and academic leaders to address […]
Author: Center for Secure Water
Circular Economy for Sustainable Water Management
In this white paper from the Center for Secure Water, Director Ana Barros, Deputy Director Ximing Cai, Managing Director Ana Pinheiro-Privette and Professor Na Wei detail the ways in which circular economy principles can be used as a foundation for sustainable water management. Read more.
Flash Floods: From prediction to protection
Center for Secure Water Director Ana Barros reflects on the devastating Guadelupe River flooding that devastated parts of Texas this summer and offers her thoughts on how AI and weather models can power next-gen flash flood preparedness. Read more.
Resilient Mobility through AI: Revolutionizing emergency planning with Digital Twins
Extreme weather events and natural disasters, such as floods and hurricanes, are increasingly disrupting critical infrastructure systems worldwide. Urban transportation networks, which are essential for evacuations, delivering emergency resources, and maintaining connectivity during crises, are particularly vulnerable. Recent hurricanes, which have caused widespread disruptions along the southern states and the U.S. East Coast, have underscored […]
AI’s Challenging Waters
The rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is intensifying the water crisis. The data centers required to run large AI models consume vast amounts of power. This significant energy consumption generates large amounts of heat, which in turn requires cooling systems to prevent server overheating. Most common cooling methods (e.g., cooling towers) depend on substantial quantities of […]
Laboratory insights into invasive fish species transport in rivers
Understanding the response of aquatic ecosystems to a rapidly changing environment is a challenging task that requires the participation of multidisciplinary teams to understand physical and biological processes across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Through collaboration between civil engineers, hydrologists, and biologists, we have advanced our knowledge on how fish eggs and […]
Center for Secure Water (C4SW) to address water stresses current and future
The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has launched the Center for Secure Water (C4SW), a new initiative dedicated to pioneering innovative solutions in the water resources sector. The Center seeks to address both current challenges and future water needs while upholding core values of excellence, adaptability, equity and impact creation. Read more.
Support from Amazon Web Services helps researchers prototype flood prediction model for the National Park Service
To improve flash flood response in the Appalachian region, researchers worked with Amazon Web Service (AWS) to prototype a hydrological prediction tool capable of providing the National Park Service flood hydrographs with 18-hour lead times. Led by CEE Department Head Ana P. Barros, the project to develop the model is being made possible through cloud computational […]
Study: ‘Legacy’ phosphorous delays water quality improvements in Gulf of Mexico
The same phosphorous that fertilizes the thriving agriculture of the Midwest is also responsible for a vast “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico near the Mississippi Delta. Efforts to reduce the amount of phosphorus that enters the Mississippi River system are underway, but research led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign suggests that remnants of […]
International water resources symposium held at U of I
The 13th Symposium on River, Coastal and Estuarine Morphodynamics, RCEM 2023, was held at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) September 24-28. More than 200 delegates from 20 countries included engineers, geologists, ecologists, geomorphologists, biologists, computer scientists, applied mathematicians and water managers – all of whom study coastal, estuary and river processes. Read more.