---
id: people/alison-heppenstall
about:
  label: Alison J. Heppenstall
  description: >-
    Professor of Geocomputation at the University of Glasgow who builds spatial
    agent-based models and works on urban digital twins of populations.
  tags:
    - agent-based model
    - geocomputation
    - microsimulation
person:
  affiliation: University of Glasgow
  role: geocomputation researcher
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: 'Alison Heppenstall (Urban Big Data Centre, Meet the team)'
      url: 'https://ubdc.ac.uk/author/alison-heppenstall'
    - title: >-
        Alison Heppenstall (Exascale computing support for agent-based
        modelling, James Hutton Institute)
      url: 'https://exascale.hutton.ac.uk/node/6'
    - title: Annual Methods Lecture 2025 (Durham University)
      url: >-
        https://dur.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/research-methods/events/annual-methods-lecture-2025/
  created: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
Alison Heppenstall is Professor of Geocomputation at the University of Glasgow, appointed jointly to the School of Social and Political Sciences and the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit.[^1,2] She co-directs the Urban Big Data Centre and the Systems Science Programme there, and is a Durham University alumna.[^2,3]

Her work applies AI and machine learning to social and spatial systems, in cities, health, retail and crime.[^1] A focus is building urban digital twins with individual-based models, agent-based models and microsimulation, together with uncertainty quantification and data assimilation, to understand how sustainability policies affect populations.[^1] She held an ESRC and Alan Turing Institute fellowship on spatial agent-based models, and in 2022 the International Society of Computational Economics gave her a prize for her contribution to social simulation and agent-based modelling.[^2] Her 2025 Durham methods lecture was titled Learning the City: AI-Driven Approaches to Complexity.[^3]

She is an author of [Agent-Based Modelling and Geographical Information Systems](/media/agent-based-modelling-and-geographical-information-systems/) and the first-named editor of [Agent-Based Models of Geographical Systems](/media/agent-based-models-of-geographical-systems/).