LxDataLab (Lisbon Urban Data Laboratory) is a cooperative initiative of the Lisbon City Council's Centre for Urban Management and Intelligence (Centro de Gestão e Inteligência Urbana de Lisboa), launched in October 2019. The project creates a structured partnership between the municipality and multiple university and research institutions, including Instituto Superior Técnico, NOVA IMS, and other Portuguese higher education bodies. Its core mission is to extract value from the city's extensive municipal data holdings by applying advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and data visualisation techniques to real urban challenges.
The model works through a challenge-based process: the municipality identifies specific urban problems it wants studied and makes relevant datasets available through the Lisboa Aberta open data portal. Academic partners then assign researchers and specialised technicians to develop analytical solutions. By 2022 the initiative had launched over 26 challenges, growing to more than 30 research projects involving upwards of 170 researchers.
Key thematic areas include tourism flow prediction, housing affordability tracking, transport demand modelling and micro-mobility analysis, solid waste production forecasting, abusive parking detection, air and liquid pollutant propagation simulation, and municipal budget optimisation. The project also addresses emergency response prediction and intermodal terminal characterisation.
LxDataLab contributed to Lisbon winning the European Capital of Innovation (iCapital) award, recognising the city's commitment to data-driven governance and collaboration between public administration and academia. The initiative sits within Lisbon's broader smart city strategy, which includes the PGIL (Lisbon Intelligent Management Platform) and the city's Integrated Operational Centre. It exemplifies a replicable model for cities seeking to leverage academic expertise and open data for evidence-based urban management.