Connected Environments MSc

About this degree

UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis has a long history of thinking about the science of cities and how data can help us understand our complex environments. Our goal for the Connected Environments programme is to extend this activity further and focus on the research challenges that relate to the infrastructure required to instrument and understand our built and natural environments from an end to end perspective – i.e from understanding what to sense, through to developing tools to support decision making. As such the course builds on the need for a skill set in programming, data capture and visualisation, and prototyping with stakeholders to support the analysis of complex systems.

The course will be delivered at the brand new UCL East campus on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. This is the biggest development in our 200-year history, and our accessible, state-of-the-art facilities will have shared labs and workshop spaces open to all, to facilitate collaboration across different disciplines. Research staff in the Connected Environments Lab have been working with stakeholders in the park for the past 10 years and have established a living lab environment in both the buildings and the surrounding landscape.

The programme has been co-developed with industry as a result of a 5 year industry academic research collaboration between UCL and Intel. A number of key learning objectives motivated the programme:

• Understanding of current state of art IoT best practice in an urban context.
• Enable skills to prototype IoT systems
• Develop skills in embedded AI techniques
• Develop mobile and web applications to collect and store time-series data
• Work with stakeholders to gain insight into the politics and economics of IoT
• Scientifically acquire and analyse data
• Use data analytics skills
• Communicate effectively through academic writing and oral presentations
• Carry out independent research

Advances in digital technologies are providing us the means to sense, visualise and increasingly understand our built and natural environments. These Connected Environment technologies are the forefront of an emerging science, interlinking the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, (AI), Virtual Reality (VR) and Data Science. This programme will introduce you to electronics, programming and the design process. You will gain hands-on experience of everything from idea generation to prototyping and deployment.

A minimum of an upper second-class Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline from a UK university or an overseas qualification of an equivalent standard.

The English language level for this programme is: Level 2

UCL Pre-Master's and Pre-sessional English courses are for international students who are aiming to study for a postgraduate degree at UCL. The courses will develop your academic English and academic skills required to succeed at postgraduate level.

Further information can be found on our English language requirements page.

This programme takes a holistic view toward developing the skill sets digital practitioners require. You will learn how to deliver end-to-end solutions from prototyping in hardware and software, to maintaining live sensor installations for the duration of the course. The technical activity is equally balanced with an understanding of the socio / economic factors such as stakeholder engagement and business model development for connected environment infrastructure.