As Course Director, i am pleased to announce the new MSc and MRes in Smart Cities, here at the The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. Both the MSc and MRes offer an innovative and exciting opportunity to study at UCL – with key training for a new career in the emerging Smart Cities market. Smart cities are focused on how computers, data, and analytics which consist of models and predictions, are being embedded into cities. Cities  currently are being extensively wired, thus generating new kinds of control and new kinds of services, which are producing massive data streams – ‘big data’.  To this end, we need powerful analytics to make sense of this new world with a new skill set to understanding and lead this new field.
CASA
The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) is one of the leading forces in the science of cities, generating new knowledge and insights for use in city planning, policy and design and drawing on the latest geospatial methods and ideas in computer-based visualisation and modelling.
CASA’s focus is to be at the forefront of what is one of the grand challenges of 21st Century science: to build a science of cities from a multidisciplinary base, drawing on cutting edge methods, and ideas in modeling, complexity, visualisation and computation. Our current mix of architects, geographers, mathematicians, physicists, urban planners and computer scientists make CASA a unique department within UCL.
Our vision is to be central to this new science, the science of smart cities, and relate it to city planning, policy and architecture in its widest sense.
EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE PROGRAMME
The MSc Smart Cities and Urban Analytics comprises 180 credits which can be taken full-time over 12 months or on a flexible modular basis of up to 5 years duration (full details of the MRes structure can be found here.  If taken full time over one year, the following structure is followed:
TERM ONE
Smart Systems Theory
The module provides a comprehensive introduction to a theory and science of cities. Many different perspectives developed by urban researchers, systems theorists, complexity theorists, urban planners, geographers and transport engineers will be considered, such as spatial interactions and transport models, urban economic theories, scaling laws and the central place theory for systems of cities, growth, migration, etc., to name a few. The course will also focus on physical planning and urban policy analysis as has been developed in western countries during the last 100 years.
The class runs during term one, for two hours per week
Assessment is by coursework (2,500 – 3,000 words)
Quantitative Methods
This module will empower you with essential mathematical techniques to be able to describe quantitatively many aspects of a city. You will learn various methodologies, from traditional statistical techniques, to more novel approaches, such as complex networks. These techniques will focus on different scales and hierarchies, from the micro-level, e.g. individual interactions, to the macro-level, e.g. regional properties, taking into account both discrete and continuous variables, and using probabilistic and deterministic approaches. All these tools will be developed within the context of real world applications.

The class runs during term one, for three hours per week (one hour lecture followed by two a hour practical)
Assessment is by coursework (2,500 – 3,000 words) and via an exam