TCS and IIT-Kanpur Partner to Build Sustainable Cities with AI

TCS has entered into a strategic partnership with the IIT-Kanpur to address one of India’s most pressing challenges: sustainable urbanisation. 

IIT-K’s Airawat Research Foundation and TCS will leverage AI and advanced technologies to tackle the challenge of urban planning at scale.

The foundation was set up by IIT Kanpur with support from the education, housing and urban affairs ministries, to rethink the way cities are built. 

According to an official release, the partnership aims to tackle the challenges of rapid urbanisation, such as urban mobility, energy consumption, pollution management, and governance, which are exacerbated when cities expand without adequate planning. 

Notably, the United Nations has flagged these issues, projecting that by 2050, 68% of the world's population will live in urban centres, driving a significant demographic shift from rural to urban areas. 

Manindra Agrawal, director at IIT Kanpur, said, “...By harnessing AI, data-driven insights, and systems-based thinking, we aim to transform our urban spaces into resilient, equitable, and climate-conscious ecosystems.”

He said that the foundation’s collaboration with TCS is advancing this vision by turning India’s urban challenges into global opportunities for innovation. 

The company informed that it 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 modelling the complex interactions between human activity and climate change, it said. 

In the statement, Dr Harrick Vin, CTO, TCS, said, “...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.”

Sachchida Nand Tripathi, project director at Airawat Research Foundation, said, “At Airawat, we are not just deploying AI tools, we are building a global model of sustainable urbanisation rooted in Indian innovation.” 

Through this collaboration, Tripathi said, “We would address the country’s most complex urban challenges, using AI-driven modelling, satellite and sensor networks, and digital platforms to improve air quality, forecast floods, optimise green spaces, and strengthen governance.”