Environmental Justice'23 Workshop at EVL

We are organizing the Environmental Justice Workshop 2023 and look forward to hearing your thoughts and interests. Please register for the workshop by completing this survey.

Welcome 👋,

This is the webpage for our workshop entitled "Generating a Discussion Between Communities and Industries: Data Collection, Analytics, Policy, and Tools", which will be held at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory , UIC on March 15, 2023 at 3 pm.

In many cities across the United States, many communities are located close to an excessive number of environmentally polluting industrial facilities. From an environmental justice viewpoint, the fact that the environmental burden is not shared across all populations living in a city is unfair. The aim of the environmental justice workshop is to bring together different stakeholders such as industries and southwest Chicago communities to get their perspective, identify and discuss pressing environmental justice challenges across Chicago, share current work across disciplines and brainstorm solutions.

On behalf of all EJ'23 organizers,

Apostolis Sambanis, Health Policy and Administration, University of Illinois, Chicago
Fabio Miranda, Computer Science, University of Illinois, Chicago
Federica Fusi, Urban Planning and Public Affairs, University of Illinois, Chicago
Marisol Becerra, Urban Planning and Public Affairs, University of Illinois, Chicago
Michael Cailas, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Illinois, Chicago
Michael D Siciliano, Public Policy, Management, and Analytics, University of Illinois, Chicago
Phillip A. Boda, Special Education, University of Illinois, Chicago
Sanjana Srabanti, Computer Science, University of Illinois, Chicago
Sybil Derrible, Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois, Chicago

Workshop Schedule

Below, our exciting schedule of the workshop. Our goal is to maximize interactivity and discussion together and to help build connections and forge collaborations. The workshop is roughly four hours and includes two hours dedicated to breakout sessions and full group discussions (along with ~30 mins for breaks).

The workshop will take place at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory on March 15th at 3 pm. Scheduling a synchronous workshop across timezones is challenging. We will select the best time that maximizes everyone’s availability (based on Google Form responses).

Here's the full schedule of the workshop:

Time	Description	Type
03:00-03:05	Opening remarks 👋 5 mins Starts at 03:00 pm CT	Talk
03:05-03:20	Introduction and overview of environmental justice dashboards Speaker: Phillip A. Boda 📢 12 min talk + 3 min Q/A	Talk + Q/A
03:20-03:35	Climate and urban sustainability Speaker: Ashish Sharma 📢 12 min talk + 3 min Q/A	Talk + Q/A
03:35-03:55	Break ☕ 20 mins	Break
03:55-04:10	Industry and environmental justice Speaker: Apostolis Sambanis 📢 12 min talk + 3 min Q/A	Talk + Q/A
04:10-04:25	Community presentations, outlining their concerns. Speaker: Theresa Reyes McNamara 📢 12 min talk + 3 min Q/A	Talk + Q/A
04:25-05:10	Group discussion and evaluation of our initial questions, and coming up with new questions. 💬 45 mins	Interactive
05:10-05:30	Break ☕ 20 mins	Break
05:30-06:00	Break out groups with members from industry, community, research and city. 💬 30 mins	Interactive
06:00-06:30	Synthesis of break out discussions. 💬 30 mins	Interactive
06:30-07:00	Closing remarks Speaker: Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez 📢 30 mins talk	Talk

Ten Questions

What are the fundamental concept of environmental justice? How do environmental issues disproportionately impact certain communities? What environmental injustices exist in diffirent communities? Are there any organizations working to create awareness about environmental justice? How can we use interactive visualization to access environmental justice issues?

Below, we pose ten questions about the “issues of environmental justice” to drive discussion and provide example areas of interest for our workshop. The questions are intended to be a start, not an end. Throughout, we confront the very definition of “environmental justice”: this is based on the principle that all people should be protected from environmental pollution and have the right to a clean and healthy environment.

How do we ensure diverse, empowered multi-stakeholder perspectives?
What data to collect and how to format it?
Who does the data collection?
How is the data collected, validated, and maintained?
How can we create interactive models of environmental justice, taking into account multiple indicators?
How can we create interactive models of environmental justice?
How do environmental justice issues disproportionately impact different communities?
How do environmental justice create impact on health issues?
How can we create interactive visualizations to highlight environmental justice issues?
How can we create effectively synthesized reports and visualizations to support new policy?