The increasing availability of data creates new opportunities not only for monitoring and management but will also radically change the way we describe, understand and design cities, challenging many fundamental assumptions of city design and planning professions. For this reason, our Consortium wants to build a Knowledge Alliance for Advanced Urbanism: to promote the innovative education and training that emerging technologies require.

European cities are becoming living laboratories where industries carry on pilot projects to experiment with new devices, all kinds of sensors, and online information and communication systems. The involvement of universities and research centres in this process is still limited.

IAAC coordinates the Knowledge Alliance for Advanced Urbanism (KAAU), whose aim is to develop an educational and training platform, in partnership with HEIs and well-established industrial partners and companies. The objective of this platform is to offer participants the possibility to engage in a semi-professional environment, developing projects with the support and expertise of institutions that are commercially involved in their field of expertise. In this manner, it provides a potential jumping platform into future professional opportunities, while offering companies a fresh R+D environment where to propose new design challenges and applications.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme under grant agreement No. 2015 – 2928 / 001 – 001.