The expertise of the Department of Smart Cities and Regions is based on the basic pillars that guarantee the improvement of the quality of life in cities and regions and their sustainable development. These include Smart Cities and Regions Logistics with a focus on city logistics, transport serviceability of cities and regions (interconnectivity of mobility and logistics), strengthening the sustainability and resilience of logistics chains or decarbonisation of logistics. Key topics include new technologies for the delivery of shipments, the "new last mile" and simulation modelling in transport logistics.

Another pillar is Transport Technology. The subject is both the transport technology itself in the individual transport modes (rail transport, road transport) with a focus on the capacity of the transport route, as well as transport technology applied to the solution of public transport issues. We deal with the transport service of cities and regions, i.e. the issue of planning the supply of transport services from the definition of transport demand (with the tools of transport planning, transport-geographical analyses and transport modelling) to the operational part itself (line planning, timetable planning, vehicle circulation and staff shifts).

An integral part of this smart solution is the Economics and Management of Smart Cities and Regions. We deal with the economics and management of transport systems, project management and other soft skills complemented by potentially new research areas such as the economic investigation of the impact of climate change on territorial units, economic assessment of concepts of particular smart solutions (critical infrastructure of transport routes and terminals, industrial zones, tourism, railway stations, etc.), ESG non-financial audits and environmental classification of individual activities in the sense of the EU taxonomy.

The new direction of the department is Artificial Intelligence for Smart Cities and Regions, or the use of new algorithms for knowledge extraction, creation of digital twins, models, simulations of territorial units, as well as advanced visualization using virtual and augmented reality. Research on complex systems, multi-agent technologies or emergent behaviour is also part of this area.

The Department sponsors a dual-degree Master's degree program in Smart Cities taught in English in cooperation with The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). This is the only technically oriented dual-degree program with an American university in the Czech Republic.

And we collaborate with a number of other foreign institutions: the ÖBB, DB, TU Dresden, ETH Zurich and TU Graz.

In the commercial sphere and public administration, we cooperate with the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Czech Republic, MIT, Citya, Smartplan, Linet, KPMG, HPE, SITA and many others.