UKCRIC Integrated Urban Infrastructure Labs
Integrated Urban Infrastructure Labs
UKCRIC will establish a network of interlinked urban infrastructure ‘observatories’, at sites across the UK, for the digital capture, mapping, sensing, monitoring, and testing of real urban infrastructure systems over the long term. The key objective is to capture the complex interrelations and interactions of real systems with the environment, people and society. The research will be enabled by close collaboration with local government and industrial partners.
A national network of urban laboratories
Deploying sensors across a variety of urban sites, this national ‘observatory’ will enable the digital capture, mapping, monitoring and testing of real cities and infrastructure at a variety of scales, over time.World-class national infrastructure research capability
Newcastle University are founding members of the the UK Collaboratorium for Research in Infrastructure & Cities (UKCRIC). This is a collaboration between many of the UK's leading universities, that is supported by a £138m investment from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills to develop new state-of-the-art research laboratories.Inadequate infrastructure costs the nation £2M a day, and extreme events can cost hundreds of millions more. To plan for the future, UKCRIC will provide evidence to de-risk, help prioritise and provide evidence for investment. UKCRIC will understand how to make the system of systems that constitutes the nation’s infrastructure more resilient to extreme events and more adaptable to changing circumstances and contexts, and how it can provide services that are more affordable, accessible and useable to the whole population.
Research laboratories, and modelling and simulation facilities, are supported by a network of observatories, including the Newcastle Urban Observatory, which will help understand long term performance and wider interactions of infrastructure within the wider urban system
Image reproduced with permission from Caitie Sellers
Glasgow Image By Macieklew (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Bristol image By Joe D (Own work by original uploader) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY-SA 1.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Manchester image By David Jones from Isle of Wight, United Kingdom [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
