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Arts, Design & Architecture City Futures Research Centre

City Futures Analytics

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The role of data, analytics to support the understanding of the city and making evidenced based decisions is essential in underpinning good urban governance and planning. The City Futures Analytics Program is focused on exploring new methodologies, building novel tools and critically evaluating the role of the latest technologies such as Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) for shaping future cities.

Competitive advantage

The Analytics Program comprises an interdisciplinary team of researchers with expertise in urban modelling, machine learning, large language models, generative-AI, dashboards and visualisation who co-design, build and test novel analytical solutions to help solve city problems.

The team has significant experience in digital planning tools which support policy-makers, planners, industry and community to co-design, to explore and evaluate what if? scenarios. For example, what is the urban feasibility of a precinct based on zoning changes made around a metro station?

The Analytics Program is leading a suite of projects which focus on building and critical evaluating Trustworthy AI solutions to housing and planning challenges facing our cities.

Impact

The Analytics team have developed several actionable insight products as part of the听 data visualisation platform. For example:

  • 听A data-driven dashboard of the 30-minute concept across Greater Sydney using smart card data. Providing insights into the percentage of city centres with commute times undertaken within 30 minutes.
  • An interactive Digital Transport Oriented Development (TOD) Atlas which has informed the development of new policies including the NSW Transport Oriented Development Program.

The Analytics Program has incubated two new companies which are taking research to market.

  • 鈥 developed a second-generation AI enabled Automated Valuation Model (AVM) used by major banks including Commonwealth Bank and Westpac.
  • I 鈥 Trustworthy Geo-AI solution for unlocking location insights.

Successful applications and research highlights

Over the past decade the Analytics Program has been successful in securing 2 Cooperative Research Centre Project (CRC-P) grants. The first CRC-P: Value Australia 鈥 Sharpening our land and property decisions with Artificial Intelligence was a $8.7 million multi-year project (2019-2022) with key partners FrontierSI, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the Valuer General of NSW.

Value Australia won several awards for innovation and commercialisation from the Cooperative Research Australia, Committee for Sydney, Planning Institute of Australia and Geospatial Council of Australia. In 2022 PEXA partnered with 黑料网大事记 City Futures and FrontierSI to establish a new company as part of PEXA Insights to take the Intellectual Property (IP) to market.

City Futures is the lead research partner in听, a $6.5 million GenAI initiative funded through the CRC-P. Developed in collaboration with Archistar, PEXA Group, and City Futures startup company MapAI, Urban Copilot is a digital assistant for planners, developers, and government staff. It simplifies the regulatory maze of urban development by interpreting complex planning controls and automating development assessment workflows.

Both large-scale industry focused analytics projects are delivering innovative Trustworthy AI solutions to assist government and the private sector in making better decisions around property and planning.

Capabilities and facilities

The Analytics team is supported through two state-of-the-art facilities. The City Analytics Lab (CAL), at the 黑料网大事记 Kensington Campus and the Housing Analytics Lab (HAL), hosted in the Commonwealth Bank of Australia鈥檚 Axel building in South Everleigh. Both of these labs comprising video walls and interactive touch screens to support both the co-design of new digital tools and end-user workshops to explore location-based insights into the form and function of the city.

The Housing Analytics Lab is part of the 黑料网大事记 Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) node. HAL is both a digital space for data sharing and analysis and a physical space for events, cross-sector engagement, and showcasing data products and outcomes. The Housing Australian Data Analytics Platform () is the enabling digital infrastructure comprising an ecosystem of digital tools to support better housing outcomes for Australia.

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Projects

Current

AI, cities and development assessment: developing trustworthy support tools

This听听investigates the legal, technical and ethical requirements for the trustworthy use of AI in urban Development Assessment, the regulatory process required for all new property development.听

Clean Air Project: Sydney Smart Sensing for Improved Ventilation, Air Quality, and Performance in Buildings

This project is a collaborative engagement between the City of Sydney and 黑料网大事记 to establish innovative strategies听(including smart sensing, real-time data analytic, and digital communications platforms) for improved听ventilation, air quality, and performance in commercial and office buildings of the City of Sydney.

Creating MapAI 鈥 A Large Language Model (LLM) that specialises in geo-spatial operations

This project aims to build MapAI - A Generative AI powered spatial analysis and visualisation engine that revolutionises geospatial intelligence by leveraging cutting-edge AI to provide accurate, efficient, and insightful analysis of geospatial data.

Housing Analytics Lab

This project aims to develop a state-of-the-art facility for incubating research, creating data products and improving digital research skills in NSW.

Implications of 鈥榙ata hunger鈥 in rental housing: protecting Australian tenants

This research project will investigate the scope and outcomes of technologically-enabled data collection practices in Australia鈥檚 private and social rental sectors, developing policy recommendations accordingly.

Integrating macroeconomic modelling in property valuations: a risk management and forecasting tool

This project explores how macro-economic variables like interest rates affect house prices on a suburb level. In this way, we can estimate forecasts for house prices over the next few years by using the RBA macro-economic forecasts.

NSW Regional Housing Metrics

The Department of Environment and Planning has sponsored a project to conduct a data audit and develop metrics in line with the four core principles of the Housing 2041 Strategy: diversity, affordability, resilience, and supply.

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Regional Housing Digital Twin Proof of Concept

The Regional Housing Digital Twin Proof of Concept (PoC) was a seven-month project that brought together academia, government, community, and industry stakeholders to design and test an innovative, co-design planning approach for three regional towns in Victoria: Apollo Bay, Shepparton, and Wangaratta. The PoC utilised the existing What If? planning support system (PSS) available via the Australian Housing Data Analytics Platform (AHDAP) to create potential housing density scenarios, with data outputs visualised within the Digital Twin Victoria (DTV) Platform. For each of the three regional towns, three planning scenarios were generated: 鈥楪rowth Area BAU鈥, 鈥極nly Government/Public Land鈥, and 鈥楢ll Possible Land (excluding constrained land)鈥 (refer to section 5). Using the DTV visualisation, the University of Melbourne鈥檚 parallel project conducted meaningful engagement with key stakeholders to inform future approaches to implementing Plan Victoria.

Safer cycling and street design: A guide for policy makers

The study investigates how to integrate cycling facilities into urban and suburban environments in ways that address the concerns of the 48% of people who are 鈥渋nterested鈥 in cycling, but 鈥渃oncerned鈥 about safety (TfNSW Cycling Customer Value Proposition Research 2013).

Smart Strathfield Roadmap and City Dashboard

This project developed and presented a Smart Strathfield Roadmap to support the Council鈥檚 objectives of transforming the Strathfield area as a digitally connected and sustainable city.

Supporting system building in non-government schools: Steiner and Montessori

This project is a collaboration between School of Education and City Futures Research Centre.听This proposal builds on existing work between the School of Education / Gonski Institute for Education and partners, Steiner Education Australia (SEA), Montessori Australia (MA), and Montessori Schools and Centres Australia (MSCA).

Towards understanding the dynamics of the regional property markets of Australia: Spatio-temporal analysis, predictive modelling, and visualisation of sales in regional SA and NSW

Housing one third of the population and generating two thirds of the export economy, regional towns and rural areas are a significant part of the Australian socio-economic structure.

Transport Oriented Development Atlas, Sydney

Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is a dense development model where mixed communities are built around transit nodes to reduce dependence on private vehicles and to increase the use of sustainable transport modes by providing walking and cycling-friendly built environments.

Western Parkland City Sensor Network Project

The Western Parkland City Sensor Network Project deployed a shared, scalable sensing network across the eight local government partners in the Western Sydney City Deal., City Deal partners Blue Mountains, Camden, Campbelltown, Fairfield, Hawkesbury, Liverpool, Penrith, and Wollondilly are collectively known as the Western Parkland City.

WalkTHERE: multimodal, multi-activity, open-source destination access metrics

This project developed a walkability index, WalkTHERE (Walking Travel from Home to Everywhere Required Everyday) designed to shed light on the potential for walking as a mode of transport.