Modelling-based analytics for urban grand challenges

Society faces grand challenges on a number of dimensions, for example: climate change, pandemics, security and geopolitics, and social exclusion. The future development of towns and cities is key to meeting these. The availability of analytic capabilities provides foundations for developing and evaluating alternative policies and plans. An extensive range of models is available, but they have not been well-focused on these kinds of grand challenges. A significant research task, therefore, is to review the modelling developments needed to provide the necessary analytics base. We consider in turn: the building bricks; the challenge of interdependencies and high dimensionality, using Lowry’s model as a framework; the integration of the elements into a comprehensive model as a basis for grand challenge analytics; and the challenges of implementation.