The 19th Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management Conference | UCL CASA, London

Several members of our lab attended CUPUM 2025, hosted this June at UCL CASA. The conference brought together international researchers working across urban analytics, digital planning, and computational modelling.

Members of our team, including Ed Manley, Manon Prédhumeau, Yihang Bai, Hussein Mahfouz, and Mahmoud Ishtaiwi, were actively involved throughout the event. It was a valuable opportunity to exchange ideas with the global CUPUM community, strengthen ongoing collaborations, and reflect on the future of urban modelling and intelligent transport systems.

Manon Prédhumeau shared a perspective on urban digital twins and the emergence of a new generation of more sustainable urban digital twins, based on ecosystems of data and models of cities. The paper presented explores the motivations behind urban digital twins and discusses some implementation challenges that threaten their long-term success. The future digital twins are moving towards modular and multidisciplinary twins—where cities reduce, reuse, and recycle their digital models.

Yihang Bai presented his recent PhD research titled “Understanding the Temporal Dynamics of Non-recurrent Traffic Disruptions: A Stage-Based Congestion Model”. The talk introduced a new framework for segmenting traffic disruptions into three key stages—development, plateau, and recovery—and proposed metrics to evaluate network responsiveness based on high-frequency speed data. The framework was applied to over 3,000 incidents in the West Midlands to identify spatial disparities in recovery efficiency and the role of network structure in supporting resilience.

Hussein presented a poster on assessing the viability of demand-responsive transport (DRT) as a feeder to high-frequency public transport in the outskirts of Leeds. Using agent-based simulation, he compared two approaches to defining DRT service areas: an operator-oriented strategy that targets high-demand zones to maximise pooling and ridership, and a feeder-oriented strategy that prioritises improving PT access in peripheral areas to reduce car dependency. The study found that while operator-oriented zones attract more users—including many car and taxi trips—they also draw people away from walking and public transport, often increasing vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT). By contrast, feeder-oriented zones better support sustainable mobility by reducing VKT and encouraging intermodal journeys that connect with PT. The work highlights that DRT on its own cannot deliver substantial environmental benefits, but could play a valuable supporting role if integrated into a broader strategy with measures like congestion pricing, enhanced public transport services, and seamless transfers.

Beyond the formal sessions, the keynotes of CUPUM 2025 fostered lively exchanges around pressing urban issues—from the application of AI in current urban research, to the future of smart cities. It was also a special moment to celebrate Professor Michael Batty’s 80th birthday, recognising his foundational contributions to urban modelling and theory.

We are grateful to the CUPUM organisers and UCL CASA for hosting an inspiring and well-organised event. We look forward to applying many of the insights from CUPUM in our ongoing research.

For more details, you can also find our papers here and here.