NUSC | Network and Urban Systems Centre

About us: our vision

Cities are engines of economic growth. They partner with industries, organisations and other urban centres, creating complex networks that exchange information, build capacities, expand resources and enhance revenues. Yet people in urban communities face a variety of complex challenges, from changing demographics and the impacts of climate change to resource crises and global competition. Acknowledging that no single approach, technical or otherwise, is enough to address these issues, the Networks and Urban Systems Centre (NUSC) brings together multi-disciplinary expertise to explore the expanding frontiers of urban challenges. Our mission is to improve the quality of life, competitiveness and sustainability of urban communities in the UK and around the world.

We aim to:

• Drive competitiveness and sustainability across production systems, urban systems, business ecosystems, business models and global value chains.
• Embrace an interdisciplinary approach, deploying frontier methods including advanced quantitative and qualitative approaches.
• Engage in international academic collaboration, in leading projects, conferences and journals.
• Develop our members’ academic careers, with a strong focus on our PhD students and early career researchers.
• Provide training for academics and professionals and conduct commissioned work.

Our impact on the world

Our core objective is to make a positive impact on the world by discovering, applying and sharing knowledge that can improve connections within and between communities, enabling them to prosper over the long term. This means finding ways to organise and develop systems that will provide sustainable benefits over the long haul, in place of short-term expediency. The main societal challenges addressed by the Networks and Urban Systems Centre are:

• effective and sustainable organisational and inter-organisational designs.
• effective and sustainable distributed production systems, clusters and value chains.
• healthy and high-quality urban ecosystems.
• business models for technologically transformed social systems.

Through the application of simulation and modelling, NUSC seeks to contribute several UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Examples include:

• Our pioneering work to map global value chains using rigorous quantitative approaches, which supports Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (SDG9), as does our research on home- and hybrid-working structures for fostering collaboration.
• Our explorations of less environmentally harmful transport and tourism sectors, along with research into ways to reinvigorate the high street, which support Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG11).
• Our support for Responsible Consumption and Production (SDG12) through our research into the factors motivating people’s adoption of EVs (electric vehicles).

Who we are

An interdisciplinary approach

NUSC draws on a wide range of specialisms, including mathematics, physics, engineering, computer science, sociology, psychology and organisational behaviour, economics, operations research, management and logistics. At the same time, our members employ diverse multiple and mixed methods, from social network analysis, network science and complexity theory to linear programming, systems dynamics, machine learning and case study and narrative analytic approaches. Our access to the advanced, rigorous methods, alongside alternative perspectives, enables us to address complex challenges facing urban communities. And, regardless of background, all our researchers share a passion for developing effective and sustainable social systems.

Partners

We are constantly looking to expand our academic and industrial collaboration network and open to different formats of collaborations such as joint PhD projects, research proposals or consulting. Among higher education institutions, our current UK collaborators include the Universities of Cambridge, Exeter, Durham, Loughborough, Liverpool, Manchester and Oxford, while our overseas academic partners range from the Universities of Amsterdam and Groningen to Harvard and the South China University of Technology. We also engage in industry and community consultancy projects with major organisations, such as Unilever, Ernst and Young, Northern Trust, South East London Chambers of Commerce, NHS, Defra, Nesta, Pensions Regulator, the Work Foundation and the Institute of Transport and Logistics.

Funding

The work of the Networks and Urban Systems Centre is supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and EU Horizon, among others. We also generate income through consultancies for a range of academic, private, public and NGO partners.

Our research

Tools for seeing the world better

NUSC members test and apply the very latest ‘frontier’ methods, be it social network analytics, advanced systems dynamics or sophisticated AI-based and topic modelling. Our approach to researching networks and urban systems echoes the development of astronomy: just as progressive improvements in telescope design allowed scientists see more of the universe, so advances in the tools and techniques for exploring human relationships are helping our researchers to ‘see’ more of the social world. Most appropriate, given our proximity to the Greenwich Observatory!

Our research can be grouped in five key, interlinked strands:

• Production systems
• Urban ecosystems
• Business ecosystems
• Digital business models
• Global value chains

Production systems

An example of research in production systems is a project identifying the competitiveness of several Italian regional clusters active in the footwear industry. The project, integrating different methodologies and data collection techniques, focused on the complexities associated with the management of a diverse set of interorganisational relations. Another piece of work examined the dynamics of innovation in the London Tech-City industrial cluster from multiple perspectives, looking at the behaviour of individual software developers, the activities of firms and what was happening at the regional level.

Urban ecosystems

Work in this theme includes research for the Dubai Government to transform benchmarking capabilities at 11 government organisations. This led to enhanced performance, improved efficiency and significant cost savings. A further example was the combination of ethnography and social media network analysis in a Peabody-funded project studying resident attitudes to urban regeneration efforts in Thamesmead.

Business ecosystems

The business ecosystems theme explores the conditions needed for sustaining innovation and entrepreneurship. An example is the development of a technique to understand how social networks in a workplace can promote innovation and performance. The results were used by 300 companies, including large corporates in UK and US, and have transformed human resources management practices. Another example is the €3.9 million EU 'FACET' project on how those in tourism and leisure sector can gain practical knowledge and experience in the transition from linear to circular practices.

Digital business models

This research strand looks at business models for technologically transformed social systems. Examples of this work include projects on cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, distributed finance and vehicle sharing schemes.

Global value chains

Here, we examine distributed and overlapping production systems, such as clusters and supply and global value chains. Important work in this area, are our new methodologies for quantifying value chains, identifying points at which most value is added.

Publications/Output

View all publications

Teaching and training

Members of the Networks and Urban Systems Centre provide taught courses on transport and logistics, innovation, mathematical modelling and business analytics to the business and management programmes for undergraduates and postgraduates. Meanwhile, we proactively encourage and support PhD supervision and training, and systematically mentor early and mid-career colleagues.

NUSC also offers a range of external training opportunities for health professionals, management consultants, digital scientists, educationalists and community professionals. In addition, since 2007 we have hosted annual, week-long winter and summer schools in network methods aimed at early career researchers from other higher education institutions, where we cover introductory and advanced research techniques, including frontier methods.

News and events

NUSC is an active academic research centre. Our members frequently speak in major international scientific conferences (e.g., Academy of Management, European Group on Organisational Studies, International Network for Social Network Analysis), publish in top international journals such as American Journal of Sociology, Organization Science, Organization, Organisation Studies, Organizational Research Methods and serve on the editorial boards of Human Relations, Journal of Business Ethics, Forum for Social Economics, Sustainability, Journal of Tourism Futures, Sustainable Manufacturing and Service Economics, International Journal of Tourism Cities, Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity and committees of the International Network for  Social Network Analysis among many others.

We also organise regular seminars acquainting staff with others’ research and interests as well as visiting presentations from world-leading experts in the field. In addition, we host prestigious international and conferences and workshops. Recent examples include:

• GameBall Rally: Web3 and Blockchain Workshops, Oct 2023
• NUSC Summer School in Social Network Analysis, July 2023
• Distributed Finance Workshop, Oct 2022
• European Social Networks Conference, Sept 2022
• Academy of International Business (UKI) Conference, April 2021
• Smart Urban Policy Futures – International workshop, held annually