The Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) is a research centre at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = � ...

(UCL), which specialises in the application and visualisation of spatial analytic techniques and simulation models to cities and regions. It is a constituent department of The Bartlett Faculty of the Built-Environment (The Bartlett School).

History

CASA was established in 1995 by a group of UCL academics who wanted a focus for their research across different academic departments in the field of

geographic information system A geographic information system (GIS) is a type of database containing geographic data (that is, descriptions of phenomena for which location is relevant), combined with software tools for managing, analyzing, and visualizing those data. In a ...

s (GIS).

Michael Batty Michael Batty (born 11 January 1945) is a British urban planner, geographer and spatial data scientist, and Bartlett Professor of Planning in The Bartlett at University College London . He has been Director—now Chairman—of the Centre f ...

was appointed the first director and initially held a joint appointment as Professor of Spatial Analysis and Planning in the Departments of Geography and

The Bartlett ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in ...

School of Planning. He is now Chairman of the centre. In 2000, Paul Longley was appointed deputy director and Professor of Geographic Information Science. He now directs UCL's ESRC Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC). CASA is still largely funded through research grants but from 2010 it began to diversify, introducing Masters programmes in spatial analysis and in Smart Cities. Professor Andrew Hudson-Smith took over the directorship in 2011 and appointed a deputy director, Dr Adam Dennett in 2016. Adam Dennett is now the director of the Centre and associate professor. Masters courses developed since 2010 include MSc's in Smart Cities and Urban Analytics and Spatial Data Science and Visualisation. It currently has 10 lecturers/associate Professors and two teaching fellows leading its courses. Sir Alan Wilson was appointed Professor of Urban and Regional Systems in 2008 but moved to the

Turing Institute The Turing Institute was an artificial intelligence laboratory in Glasgow, Scotland, between 1983 and 1994. The company undertook basic and applied research, working directly with large companies across Europe, the United States and Japan deve ...

in 2016. The centre is now an administrative unit in

Faculty of the Built Environment.

Research areas

CASA researches the science of cities, working with city governments and related research groups on simulating and visualising urban problems. Their work on transport and movement has included Transport for London’s

Oyster card The Oyster card is a payment method for public transport in London (and certain areas around it) in England, United Kingdom. A standard Oyster card is a blue credit-card-sized stored-value contactless smart card. It is promoted by Transport ...

data, public bikes schemes such as the London's cycle hire scheme, population segregation in large cities as well as climate change in the London region. The centre is active in exploring how the

Internet of Things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other com ...

can be deployed in large urban areas linking objects in the built environment through internet technologies, and was active with the

Technology Strategy Board Innovate UK is the United Kingdom's innovation agency, which provides money and support to organisations to make new products and services. It is a non-departmental public body operating at arm's length from the Government as part of the Unite ...

’s Future Cities

Catapult A catapult is a ballistic device used to launch a projectile a great distance without the aid of gunpowder or other propellants – particularly various types of ancient and medieval siege engines. A catapult uses the sudden release of store ...

in pioneering new software systems for smart cities such as dashboards and portals. Its research programme in city science concentrates on applying social physics to urban systems based on modelling the diffusion of behaviours such as the

2011 London riots The 2011 England riots, more widely known as the London riots, were a series of riots between 6 and 11 August 2011. Thousands of people rioted in cities and towns across England, which saw looting, arson, as well as mass deployment of police and ...

and it is heavily involved in using methods of scaling and

allometry Allometry is the study of the relationship of body size to shape, anatomy, physiology and finally behaviour, first outlined by Otto Snell in 1892, by D'Arcy Thompson in 1917 in ''On Growth and Form'' and by Julian Huxley in 1932. Overview Allom ...

to examine city performance.

Research programme

CASA's research programme is primarily funded by research grants from the British research councils, mainly

ESRC The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), formerly the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). UKRI is a non-departmental public body (NDPB) funded by the UK government. ESRC provides fundi ...

and

EPSRC The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is a British Research Council that provides government funding for grants to undertake research and postgraduate degrees in engineering and the physical sciences, mainly to unive ...

. Since 2008, the centre has been increasingly funded by EU research grants from the 7th Framework and from the

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientif ...

(ERC) and in 2014, it was awarded funding from the

's Future Cities Catapult to provide demonstration capabilities for urban and regional modelling. CASA has graduated some 50 PhDs since 2000. Several alumni have made important contributions to the science of cities working in geographic information systems, spatial analysis and urban modelling at UC Berkeley, Maryland, NYU, George Mason, UCL, KRISH, LSE, TU-Istanbul, KCL, Cardiff, Tehran, Manchester, OU, ETH-Zurich, kingston, Malta, Warwick, Birkbeck, and Liverpool.

OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed ...

(OSM) originated in UCL CASA and The Bartlett, and the firms GeoFutures and Intelligent Space (acquired by

Atkins Atkins may refer to: Places in the United States * Atkins, Arkansas, a city * Atkins, Iowa, a city * Atkins, Louisiana, an unincorporated community * Atkins, Nebraska, an unincorporated community * Atkins, Virginia, a census-designated place * Atki ...

) were associated with the centre. The company Prospective Labs spun-off from CASA in 2016 and is engaged on developing new software systems for planning and land management.

Contributions

Members of CASA have pioneered the development of urban and regional modelling through a series of books that go back to the 1970s. Their work is published in a series of web sites on the CASA Blog Aggregator. Key works that reflect CASA's research programme are ''Fractal Cities'' (1994), ''Cities and Complexity'' (2005), ''The Science of Cities and Regions'' (2012), ''Agent Based Model of Geographical Systems'' (2012), and ''The New Science of Cities'' (2013). The journals ''

Environment and Planning B The ''Environment and Planning'' journals are five academic journals. They are interdisciplinary journals with a spatial focus of primary interest to human geographers and city planners. The journals are also of interest to the scholars of economic ...

'', edited by Batty, and ''Future Internet'',''Future Internet''
/ref> edited by Hudson-Smith, are run from CASA. The major research focus of CASA is in blending the visualisation of complex urban systems with their simulation.

References

External links

CASA website

CASA Blog Aggregator
{{University College London, academics University College London Research organisations in England Spatial analysis Geographic data and information organisations in the United Kingdom