SYNC

SYNC is web service that enables users to model the interdependencies between multiple urban systems online. The service provides tools to manipulate the physical form, transport infrastructure, land use activity, social, economic and environmental conditions of virtual cities and explore the implications of these changes directly via a web interface. SYNC provides outputs relevant to a wide range of urban planning, design and management problems such as forecasting demographic change, travel patterns, environmental performance, energy consumption, pollution rates and exposures, infrastructure demands, land use and rent distributions, access to health and education resources and socio-economic segregation, all building on relationships between urban sub-systems. SYNC has also been designed to speed up, simplify and automate model procedures and provide a user experience that makes direct online modelling possible.

We believe that a successful future for our cities will only be realised if integrated modelling resources are opened up to a much wider market and used more frequently in the planning and design process. We aim to achieve this by providing the technology to democratise the generation of model outputs and help different professional and community stakeholders to collaborate on shared challenges.

SYNC is being developed by a team of researchers from University College London and is being supported by UCL Business and The Future Cities Catapult in taking the product to market. Our project will take SYNC from a pre-beta prototype to market release through a structured programme of product development, market research and collaborative engagement with future license holders, developer API users, data providers, web service providers and trials of the consumer service via beta release. We will demonstrate the power of this approach by applying the service to a number of case study projects and undertaking trials of a beta release with members of the prospective user base.