The kick-off meeting of URBAN-IA was held at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in February 2026. This four-year project treats urban mobility not just as a set of data, but as a complex physical system.
The goal is to embed artificial intelligence directly into urban infrastructure, from transport networks to critical accessibility nodes, to enable real-time intelligent management and dynamic optimisation. The project aims to move from theory to real decision-making platforms that make cities more sustainable and adaptive.
The project is coordinated by José Luis Moura and Luigi dell’Olio from the Universidad de Cantabria. The other partners are the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, with María Eugenia López-Lambas and Julio A. Soria-Lara (TRANSyT-UPM); the Universidad de Granada, with Juan de Oña; and the Universitat Politècnica de València, represented by Ángel A. Juan and Elena Pérez Bernabeu from CIGIP’s ICSO Meta group.
URBAN-IA is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under its 2025 artificial intelligence research call. See the UPV subproject page: Integrated Prediction Framework for Urban Mobility and Governance.