---
id: books/urban-informatics
about:
  label: Urban Informatics
  description: >-
    Open-access edited volume from Shi, Goodchild, Batty, Kwan and Zhang, 2021,
    on the data, methods and infrastructure used to sense, model and run cities.
  tags:
    - urban informatics
    - smart cities
    - data
    - remote sensing
    - open access
book:
  authors:
    - Wenzhong Shi (ed.)
    - Michael F. Goodchild (ed.)
    - Michael Batty (ed.)
    - Mei-Po Kwan (ed.)
    - Anshu Zhang (ed.)
  publisher: Springer Singapore
  year: 2021
  isbn: '9789811589829'
  url: 'https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-15-8983-6'
domains:
  - places
  - sensory
  - mobility
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: Urban Informatics - Google Books
      url: 'https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9789811589829'
    - title: Crossref record for 10.1007/978-981-15-8983-6 (Urban Informatics)
      url: 'https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1007/978-981-15-8983-6'
    - title: 'Open Library: Urban Informatics'
      url: 'https://openlibrary.org/works/OL27403495W'
  created: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
A large open-access reference on urban informatics: how data and computing support the operation, management and planning of cities. It explains how embedded sensing and networked populations make a city more responsive and produce real-time and crowdsourced data at scale, reviews the main methods including urban remote sensing, machine learning and statistical modelling, and gives technical guidance on the analytical tools needed to study smart cities, with attention to how those tools feed design and policy for efficiency, the environment and equity.

For a twin builder it is the broad survey of the sensing, data and modelling layers that a city twin is assembled from, and it is free to read.