Urban Center for Computation and Data

Over the next several decades, the population of the world’s cities will nearly double, increasing by 2.6 billion people.

Concurrently, an unprecedented volume and diversity of data is being collected and published by an increasing number of cities, providing opportunities to optimize the operation of cities and anticipate the impact of their growth using computational methods and tools.

To seize this opportunity, the new Urban Center for Computation and Data (UrbanCCD) will apply the most advanced computational and data-driven techniques to the challenge of intelligent urban planning and design. The center will be initially funded by a $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation that unites researchers from several Chicago institutions, city officials and private enterprise with the Computation Institute (CI), a joint initiative between the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory.