LEAM Major Projects

Click project title to go to the site or click here to see complete project list

McHenry County

McHenry County GeoPortal is intended to support planning in McHenry County.  It is an evolving and robust data repository for land-use simulations, plans, data sets, and analyses.  It has been designed and developed in cooperation with the McHenry County Planning Department and the State of Illinois Department of Natural Resources.  The McHenry County GeoPortal supports analyses and comparisons of spatial data, plans, LEAM simulations, resource inventories, and other critical information about and important to the county.

Gateway LEAM

The University of Illinois LEAM lab, in collaboration with local agencies and stakeholders, is developing gleam, a visually dynamic tool for assessing complex regional growth issues and their potential impacts on the physical, economic, social and environmental quality of the area. The leam process promotes consensus-building among diverse interests as groups work together to identify and assess emerging issues, and evaluate urban growth patterns to consider if policies are consistent with the needs and wants of local residents.

CMAP-AG

The site presents the results of a collaborative effort between the Land Use Evolution and Impact Assessment Model (LEAM) laboratory and the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP).  As part of CMAP's comprehensive planning initiative for Chicago and surrounding communities, known as GOTO 2040, we have examined a variety of strategies concerning the preservation of prime agricultural lands throughout the nine counties make up northeast Illinois (Cook, Dupage, Grundy, Kankakee, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will Counties).  Together with CMAP, LEAM have developed a range of potential approaches for agricultural preservation and examined them through LEAM simulations and a variety of impact assessment algorithms.    

Strategic Sustainability Assessment

Regional sustainability objectives are a set of long-term goals as defined by the region.  Therefore, regional stakeholder participation is crucial in developing and achieving these goals.  Some means of obtaining stakeholder input are:  conducting workshops, using an interactive website, or employing mailed surveys.  Recurring issues of concern include: air quality, water quantity and quality, threatened and endangered species, renewable and non-renewable energy availability, housing availability and affordability, education, and the ability to test and train.

Chicago Regional Watershed Planning Support System

It is a collaborative effort between the Land Use Evolution and Impact Assessment Model (LEAM) Laboratory, the Illinois-Indiana Sea-Grant Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Lake Michigan Watershed Ecosystem Partnership (LMWEP) organized and administered by the Alliance for the Great Lakes. The purpose of this project is to develop and apply dynamic spatial simulation technologies and hydrological modeling to create a coastal and watershed planning support system for Northeastern Illinois. LMWEP will use this web-based model to: 1) assess the future growth of the Chicago metro area and how this projected growth will affect the region's water resources, 2) consider the future policies and actions that will be needed to manage and protect the region's coastal and water resources, and 3) deliver this knowledge so that it is understandable, usable, and widely available to local officials, nonprofit organizations and other stakeholders concerned with environmental protection and land use planning in the Chicago region.  Funding for this project is provided by the Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology (CICEET), a partnership of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of New Hampshire.

Maryland Scenario Project

In an age defined by issues of homeland security and climate change, with the growing threat of sea level rise and other natural disasters, with an economy based heavily on a federal government presence, with growing retiree and immigrant populations, with congested roadways and aging infrastructure, and with limited water supplies and an unhealthy Chesapeake Bay, the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education has embarked in recent years on an effort to develop and fully evaluate the impacts of Maryland’s future regional and statewide growth patterns.

Amenity Planning Support System

The Amenity Planning Support System was designed and developed through international cooperation between the LEAM laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Rural Development Administration in Korea to facilitate rural amenity planning in Korea.  The Amenity Planning Support System functions as a spatial data repository that includes amenity resource data and planning tools necessary to support analysis and comparisons of spatial plans, LEAM simulations, and other critical information about the preservation and development of rural amenities.