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Graduate Certificate in Applied Urban Informatics

Changes to this program will take effect in the 2024/2025 academic year.

Contact

For contact information, please visit the Metropolitan College website.

Available on campus and online, the Graduate Certificate in Applied Urban Informatics at Boston University’s Metropolitan College is concerned with studying urban issues using existing and emerging forms of data, along with analytical and computational techniques. The certificate will provide analytic and computational tools and will focus on skills needed to work with varied data sources to inform policy decisions in a range of government, nonprofit, and private organizations.

Learning Outcomes

  • Define and identify urban challenges in the sphere of planning, policy, and operations, particularly related to social, economic, and environmental constraints that influence decision-making.
  • Utilize the informatics toolkit to define and address specific challenges and to derive actionable insight from data.
  • Analyze the ethical implications of emerging technologies.
  • Incorporate data analysis results into urban planning and policy decisions to increase the quality of life for residents and support city government.
  • Communicate results clearly and effectively in a medium appropriate to a project, without relying on jargon.

Admissions

For current admissions information, please visit the Metropolitan College website.

Program Requirements

Applicants to the program are required to have a bachelor’s degree. Some courses may have additional prerequisites.

A total of four courses (16 units) are required and distributed as follows:

  • MET UA 511 Introduction to Urban Informatics
  • MET UA 591 Applied Analytical Methods
  • MET UA 654 GIS and Spatial Analysis
  • One elective selected with an advisor

Possible electives include:

  • Electives from UA and CJ with advisor’s approval
  • MET CS 521 Information Structures with Python
  • MET CS 677 Data Science with Python (prerequisite: MET CS 521 Information Structures with Python or equivalent)
  • MET CS 688 Web Mining and Graph Analytics (prerequisite: MET CS 544 or MET CS 555)
  • MET CS 699 Data Mining (prerequisites: MET CS 546, and either MET CS 579 or MET CS 669)

Online Delivery Format

Not all courses are available online. Please check with the department for a list of courses that are offered in the online format.

Related Bulletin Pages

Beyond the Bulletin