Layer your project's evidence into one live picture.
We build tools for development programmes, the public sector, the built environment and humanitarian teams that bring maps, text and numbers together, so your team can shape live projects based on past and present data.
An animated map of cities drawn in dots from satellite land cover (London, Dhaka, Lomé, Rio de Janeiro, Manchester, Llanaelhaearn in Wales, Chengdu, Nairobi, Chennai and Bandung): built-up areas, rivers and the sea, and green space. Short prompts appear over each city, such as analysing green spaces or synthesising past evaluations.
Evidence for places: spatial and social analysis for local government, cities and development programmes.
Learn moreBetter access to what your organisation already knows, and better tools to plan the next programme.
Learn moreTools for humanitarian teams, built with partners on live projects and made for conditions in the field.
Learn moreWork
Evidence for places: spatial and social analysis for local government, cities and development programmes.
Learn more about Urban StudioLocal government · 2026
Subcontractor on a Nottingham City Council study
A live 3D model of the city centre: LiDAR terrain, the height of every building, landmarks included, and protected views.
Sun, shadow and views are analysed for each massing option, so the policy recommendations on where tall buildings belong trace back to evidence a committee can look at.
Strategic planning · 2026
The URBED Trust
A model of the whole county on a 250 m hexagonal grid. Constraints such as green belt, heritage and ecological designations sieve out land; attractors such as jobs, stations and land values rank what is left.
A team can switch each rule on or off, compare scenarios such as new stations, and see the trade-offs in front of them.
Our spatial engine · 2024 to 2026
Layered
Our spatial engine. It puts a project's own data on one map with open public data, such as deprivation, population, flood risk and access to services, so a team can see where needs and evidence concentrate and check them against the project's objectives.
Each urban commission is built on it and tailored to the place and the question.
Civic Innovation Challenge · 2023
Mayor of London
An experiment for the Mayor of London's Civic Innovation Challenge: could public place data, such as Google Maps reviews, act as a proxy for civic strength across London?
The aim was to complement neighbourhood primary research, not replace it.
Better access to what your organisation already knows, and better tools to plan the next programme.
Learn more about Knowledge StudioOur engine
Whoever asks gets a report written for them, for their role and their question, drawn from all of a project's documents and data, spatial data included, as text, graphics and charts, every point cited to its source.
We build it to be adapted to each project, urban and humanitarian alike.
Our engine
The engine scores a new proposal or plan against what earlier work found, criterion by criterion.
Each score comes with cited strengths, gaps and suggested changes.
Tools for humanitarian teams, built with partners on live projects and made for conditions in the field.
Learn more about Humanitarian StudioRoad to Relief · 2022
A live map for Road to Relief, an NGO evacuating people from eastern Ukraine in 2022: evacuation routes, reception centres and shelters alongside conflict data, for the team planning journeys and aid runs.
What it taught us shapes our humanitarian work since: in the field, connections drop and plans change by the hour, so tools have to work offline and stay simple.
Evaluations
Our team evaluates Red Cross and Red Crescent programmes, including global and multi-country ones, with our evaluation partner, SARDE (opens in a new tab). Between us we have evaluated psychological first aid and mental health support for people affected by the Ukraine crisis, with the IFRC and 28 National Societies across Europe, including field work in Bulgaria, Spain, Lithuania and Czechia. We are evaluating livelihoods and employability support for people affected by the conflict, in Ukraine, Poland and Slovakia, and have evaluated early warning systems in a global programme with National Societies in East Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America and Türkiye.
When to bring us in
Projects rarely arrive with a clean brief. Wherever yours stands, there is a useful way in.
Before it starts
Map what is already known about the place or the programme, and where the gaps are.
Design
Choose what to collect and what already exists: open data, surveys, interviews, site studies, past reports.
Delivery
Bring evidence in as it arrives, with files organised and searchable and every view kept current.
Reporting
Outputs for each reader: a committee paper, a funder report, a community summary, a technical annex.
After close
Consolidate what the project learned into a knowledge base the next project starts from.
Ways in A defined studyA short pilotA tool inside your programme
The data
Layer your project's own evidence (interviews, surveys, reports, monitoring data) with open data, in one system your team can question.
About
We started working together in 2022, meeting regularly in Granary Square, London, to talk through our ideas and projects. Ayesha came from programme development, where she commissioned and delivered projects across international agencies, Jonah from research and evaluation, and Kieran from software, in quantitative research and hospital systems. Between us we felt that the rapid development of new technologies in our current era was not yet being effectively applied to the social or environmental sectors. We therefore began looking for problem spaces that, firstly, were closely connected to the wellbeing of people and nature; secondly, could benefit from new technical approaches; and thirdly, presented a complexity and challenge that we felt we could have most fun solving.
Ayesha Khalil
Co-founder
Multilateral urban development specialist (World Bank, IOM) with experience across international agencies on sustainable infrastructure initiatives. Leads strategy and partnerships.
Jonah Rudlin
Co-founder
Evaluation and research specialist (IFRC, IFC, UNDP, Mayor of London), from multi-country evaluations of mental health and humanitarian programmes to community health research in London. Leads product and research design.
Kieran Tilley
Co-founder
Software architect since 2010 across hospital software, quantitative research and secure platforms. Leads architecture, engineering and security.
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