DuPage County Stormwater Management Division to Benefit from Universityof IllinoisResearch Grant

WHEATON― The Stormwater Management Division of DuPage County (SMD) has been informed that the Salt Creek Real-Time Streamflow Simulation System, developed by the SMD in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), has been selected for a grant worth $87,514 by the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Adaptive Environmental Sensing and Information Systems (AESIS) Initiative. 

“This research study recognizes the people of DuPage County who have made a tremendous investment in proactive stormwater management and flood damage prevention,” says Jim Zay, Chairman of the DuPage County Stormwater Management Planning Committee. 

The grant will fund a research project, the Urban Digital Watershed--Real-time Hydrological Data Dissemination and Analysis using an Integrated Stormwater Management Information System in and near the Salt Creek Watershed, which will incorporate real-time streamflow, NEXRAD, and rainfall gage information collected by DuPage County Stormwater Management Division, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, the National Weather Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey.

This will then be converted into a browsable aerial photograph type of map interface that will improve public access and understanding of streamflow-related conditions such as flooding and potential flooding throughout Salt Creek. 

“By being able to conduct this study, we will be able to provide valuable data analysis for the operation of flood control structures by the engineers of the Stormwater Management Division,” says Zay.  “Automated detection of anomalous and missing data will also be studied, and data summaries developed for decision support.”  

In connection with this project, several other UIUC research projects are also funded to focus on aspects of water-use decisions, data-collection network optimization, catch basin effects on West Nile virus outbreaks, human impacts on watershed management, and stormwater management optimization. 

According to Barbara Minsker, UIUC professor and director of AESIS, “the Salt Creek watershed provides an excellent test bed for prototyping the Digital Watershed in supporting both research and decision making, given the large investments made in data collection networks and modeling infrastructure by the SMD and other agencies.”

AESIS is funded by the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Vice Chancellor for Research, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

The Stormwater Management Division in cooperation with the USGS operates 36 rainfall gages throughout and near DuPage County.  Stream elevations are monitored at more than 15 locations, and streamflows at 11 sites are monitored, computed, and published by the USGS.  NEXRAD estimates of precipitation data in the form of digital files for 4-kilometer by 4-kilometer areas are formatted and used in streamflow simulation models and made available through the Internet. 

The Digital Watershed project will graphically present the NEXRAD data and provide comparison with the precipitation gauging and stream gauging in real time.  The forecasted elevations determined through the computer models operated by the SMD will be improved by the access to the analyzed and displayed data, and the computer model results will be also incorporated into the interface for operational decision support. 

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