Spotlight On: Roberto Murcio

How would you summarise your personal research?
I'm a far-from-equilibrium urban researcher. My academic heart is with cities, and everything happening on them. Particularly, I look at cities as complex objects that can be studied in a similar way that galaxies or molecules; their street networks as rivers or blood vessels; their economic activities with gravitation.

Tell us a little about the research you’re doing at the moment:
I'm collaborating with Mike Batty in CASA's famous "large infrastructure impact model" known as QUANT (quant.casa.ucl.ac). Along with Alan's Turing Inst, we are developing the next generation of spatial interaction models that would play a fundamental role in policy planning and urban development. Another branch of my research taps into estimating pedestrians flows in urban environments form Wi-Fi requests; look for common patterns in different street networks around the world; uncover complex patterns in energy consumption in the UK from smart meters data.

What is the most useful thing you’ve learned since you arrived at CASA?
That science is self-organised. No need to whip people around to make the magic happening

Where can people find out more about your work?
Blog: https://citiescience.org/
@RobMurcio at twitter
Google scholar me for my papers

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