In metric geometry, asymptotic dimension of a metric space is a large-scale analog of Lebesgue covering dimension. The notion of asymptotic dimension was introduced my Mikhail Gromov in his 1993 monograph Asymptotic invariants of infinite groups in the context of geometric group theory, as a quasi-isometry invariant of finitely generated groups. As shown by Guoliang Yu, finitely generated groups of finite homotopy type with finite asymptotic dimension satisfy the Novikov conjecture. Asymptotic dimension has important applications in geometric analysis and index theory.