University of Chicago, Computation Institute

The University of Chicago is a private research university with an historic commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry and a tradition of excellence in the social and physical sciences. This grant provides general operating support for the Urban Center for Computation and Data (Urban CCD), an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Chicago co-led by the Computation Institute and Argonne National Laboratory. Urban CCD uses computer and computational science methods to study cities and builds tools for modeling and analysis to inform urban development practitioners and policymakers. The grant supports a range of Urban CCD projects, including development of Plenar.io, a prototype tool to support open data discovery by non-data scientists; the City of Chicago's Smart Data Platform; and the Array of Things urban sensing and instrumentation pilot.

This grant supports the Center for Urban Systems and Information Sciences, a new research institute co-led by the University of Chicago’s Computation Institute and Argonne National Laboratory that aims to use computational science methodologies to improve the way cities are planned, governed, and experienced by their citizens. The Center has three principal objectives: to create a dynamic, coherent data platform for urban research from a range of sources; to develop new tools and methods for analyzing and visualizing urban data; and to enable more effective modeling and forecasting of urban dynamics.

In support of a project to explore new approaches to energy modeling.