Cities are the center of economic and societal development and today over half of the world’s population resides in cities, and up to 80% is projected for 2050. Cities generate more than 80 percent of global GDP, consume 75 % of natural resources and generate 50% of global waste. Resource efficiency is therefore key for cities to contribute to local and global sustainability and offer at the same time high potential for financial savings.
This project focuses on developing and integrating new tools and services to promote urban resource efficiency with minimum environmental impacts while contributing to promote economic development and preserving actual levels of reliability. Dispersion of agents producing data at urban level leads to mixed results in applying indicators in different environments and sometimes with little gain in urban performance. This project will advance the science of urban systems modeling and data representation supported by urban “big data” collection and processing.