With climate change and new industrial development, Illinois’ demand for water is projected to increase. To provide water with adequate quantity and quality, cities and communities need information to predict how much water will be available, how much demand there will be in the decades to come, and what options are available to increase water availability and manage demand cost-effectively.
Water Availability Assessment & Planning
Since 2006, ISWS has been leading water availability assessment projects throughout the state. One program, Water Supply Planning, divides the state into 10 regions and 1 subregion. Funded by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ Office of Water Resources, this effort enables Water Survey scientists to work with regional stakeholders to identify water supply concerns and develop supply-and-demand projections for water resources.
Other programs focus on projects at the subregional and local levels and thus require different modeling approaches and data collection strategies, considering groundwater resources within economic planning time horizons, or investigating water resource quality when evaluating water availability. Collectively, the mix of regional and local planning provides a holistic understanding of water availability in Illinois and represents the combined effort of many individuals.
Learn more about water supply planning in Illinois.
Hydrologic modeling
Groundwater flow models simulate local and regional water availability and groundwater contamination, helping to understand real-world risks and changing conditions. Our scientists have provided expertise in this area for decades, developing and refining models used in numerous regions and other states. Learn more about our groundwater flow models.
ISWS scientists have also developed watershed models for selected watersheds to investigate the impacts of future water and land use and climate change. They developed a publicly accessible streamflow assessment model to estimate streamflow statistics under normal and dry hydroclimatic conditions.
Our Computational Hydrology for Decision Support group develops and uses novel tools for integrated hydrology modeling, investigating topics such as surface water-groundwater interactions and water resource conservation.
Data collection
The Illinois Water Inventory Program (IWIP) is a statewide initiative that collects and manages data on water withdrawals from a range of sources, including groundwater and surface water. The program requires high-capacity water users, such as municipalities, industries, and agricultural operations, to report their water usage. The IWIP data is critical for water resources planning and management, especially for the water supply planning program.
ISWS has also partnered with the U.S. Geological Survey to work with farmers to expand metering of center-pivot irrigation water use, creating the potential for improved local and statewide estimates of agricultural demands.