TCS teams up with IIT Kanpur for AI-powered urban planning

Tata Consultancy Services has announced a strategic partnership with IIT Kanpur’s AIRAWAT Research Foundation to deploy artificial intelligence, remote sensing, and digital twin technologies for scalable urban planning focused on resilience, equity, and ecological balance. As part of this partnership, TCS and the Foundation will leverage AI and advanced technologies to tackle the challenge of urban planning at scale, in India.

AIRAWAT Research Foundation was set up by IIT Kanpur with support from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to rethink the way cities are built.

By combining AI-driven modelling with remote sensing and data fusion, the programme aims to deliver practical outcomes across mobility, energy, pollution control, and governance, a few of the critical areas for sustainable city management.

Prof. Manindra Agrawal, Director, IIT Kanpur, said, “India’s cities are at the heart of the nation’s growth story and hold the potential to inspire sustainable urban futures. By harnessing Artificial Intelligence, data-driven insights, and systems-based thinking, we aim to transform our urban spaces into resilient, equitable, and climate-conscious ecosystems. The AIRAWAT Consortium at IIT Kanpur, working in close collaboration with Tata Consultancy Services, is advancing this vision by turning India’s urban challenges into global opportunities for innovation. Together, we are positioning India as a leader in shaping cities that balance growth with sustainability.”

With expertise in digital twin technologies, TCS will enable rapid ‘what-if’ scenario modelling, empowering urban planners to simulate and evaluate interventions before implementation. The long-term goal is to build cities that are resilient, equitable, and ecologically balanced, while deepening the understanding of and modeling the complex interactions between human activity and climate change.

Dr Harrick Vin, CTO, TCS, said, “The future of urban living is rooted in our capacity to envision cities as dynamic ecosystems - adapting and evolving in response to the ever-changing needs of industry and society. Through this partnership with IIT Kanpur’s AIRAWAT Research Foundation, TCS will bring our deep capabilities in AI, remote sensing, multi-modal data fusion, digital twin, as well as data and knowledge engineering technologies to help solve today’s urban challenges and anticipate the needs of tomorrow’s cities. India stands at the cusp of redefining urban living, and we are laying the foundation for a new paradigm in urban planning and management—one that is predictive and profoundly human-centric.”