Processing and Transforming Environmental Justice Data: Multiple Approaches and Urban Field Campaign Collaboration

Chicago faces large environmental stressors and social inequities, mostly in marginalized communities needing tools to identify and address environmental problems. We have started developing a comprehensive web-based data visualization toolkit to address these issues. The primary goal of the project is to create a user-friendly web-based visualization toolkit that could be used to identify environmental justice issues in the Chicago region. The toolkit integrates diverse meteorology (model WRF-CHEM, satellite and in-situ observations) and socio-demographic datasets. Using Python for geospatial data manipulation, we analyzed data from different timestamps which could help city planners understand times of the day when marginalized communities are the most vulnerable. Students also gained experience in an urban field campaign to gather temperature, air quality, wind speeds. The field campaign gave valuable insights into the urban atmospheric conditions of the Chicago region. These projects will help increase awareness of environmental justice.