Infrastructure Systems MSc

The Infrastructure Systems MSc programme at UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering offers a comprehensive and dynamic educational experience. Infrastructure systems embrace transport, energy, water, wastewater, and data communications sectors which provide critical services to the public, industry, hospitals, businesses, government, etc. These services have significant economic, social, and environmental impacts. Disruptions must be managed and prevented even in the context of challenging performance demands (less cost, less material/resource use; accessibility requirement; and environmental concerns such as climate change, emissions, etc.). You will have the opportunity to learn how to solve these challenges through infrastructure design and adaptation.

Digital technologies are helping to create transparency about interdependencies between infrastructure systems and are driving industrial change. Innovations in business models, such as the circular economy, are finding novel ways to do less harm to the environment. You will explore innovations that underpin major transitions in infrastructure systems to meet industry, government and consumer needs.

There is such a diversity of organisations that contribute to infrastructure provision. Yet traditional programmes continue to take a sectoral focus ignoring interdependencies between systems. Complexity science provides a scientific basis for investigating integrated and co-evolutionary systems. You will learn about emergent properties of infrastructure, such as resilience, security, and performance, how they change over time, and how different organisations contribute to making them happen.

The programme also focuses on research skills through the term group project where you will learn to work as a team to identify research methods used to solve challenges in infrastructure systems. You will have opportunities to look at practical applications and receive input and feedback from the industry on your designs to improve performance. You will develop the skills to work confidently with data and grasp the underlying concepts and practical trade-offs in infrastructure systems transition.