WILO

A System Design for Urban Willow-Based Oil Spill Response



WILO is an urban sustainability decision system designed to support oil spill response by transforming seasonal willow floss—an overlooked urban waste—into a distributed environmental resource.

Oil spill cleanup today relies heavily on chemical dispersants and labor-intensive processes, often resulting in secondary pollution and delayed response. Meanwhile, large quantities of willow floss generated in cities are treated as nuisance waste despite their natural oil-absorbing properties. WILO connects these two disconnected systems through a city-scale design framework.

The system integrates urban data, environmental alerts, and material logistics into a unified decision-support structure. AI is used as a synthesis layer to aggregate information, model risk trends, and visualize potential consequences, enabling stakeholders to understand when, where, and how willow-based resources can be deployed effectively. Importantly, AI does not make decisions; it supports human judgment by clarifying options and trade-offs.

UX interfaces serve as the primary human entry point to the system, translating complex system states into accessible insights for coordinated action. By reframing oil spill response as a systemic design challenge rather than a single-product solution, WILO demonstrates how urban waste, environmental risk, and decision-making can be aligned into a sustainable, closed-loop system.