Urban System Lab

The Urban Systems Lab

"The Urban Systems Laboratory brings together Imperial's outstanding expertise in urban infrastructure, systems and services to facilitate collaboration and cross-disciplinary working, provide training and thought leadership and to enhance the application and practical impact of our research."  — Prof. John Polak, Founding Director, Urban Systems Laboratory

Cities are central to economic growth and social activity with a growing share of the global population. Increasingly, the need of cities to improve performance in services and  infrastructure is creating not only technical, social, and business challenges, but also opportunities as new niches are opened on the basis of new technology and a better understand of the value of data. Information about infrastructure performance, capability, user activity, and intent is increasingly becoming a key-driver to improving efficiency and growth of new services, leading to the development of the smart city.

USL will focus on the new, holistic and cross cutting inter-disciplinary field of “Urban Systems Engineering,” and will play its part in creating the next generation of urban system integrators.