Leveraging Innovative Data
ieConnect has prioritized the development and expansion of data systems using new technologies to harvest large amounts of data at a higher frequency or with greater geographic coverage and spatial resolution than traditional survey methods allow. These include data coming from satellite imagery, crowdsourcing, sensors, SMS and QR codes, paper records, Google Maps, GPS trackers, and mobile phones and mobile applications. The program has built robust data systems in client countries to collect data from multiple sources designed to generate impact throughout the life of the transport project and beyond. The program has also developed world-class innovative tools and platforms to support clients to generate data for policy decisions and supported governments to move from traditional data, such as administrative surveys, to real-time data and from paper to digital records.
ieConnect brings together operational and research teams in a unique collaborative model to help understand better and generate evidence on the impact of transport interventions, to improve decision-making for transport investments in the long term.
This program has been funded with UK aid from the UK government.
Themes
ieConnect projects seek to drive change at scale in addressing global challenges, focusing on 8 thematic areas:
Urban Mobility: ieConnect focuses research on key cities, using them as laboratories to understand transport systems. The program invests in innovative data, combines it with traditional survey data, and conducts experiments to address critical questions like transport pricing and impacts for workers.
Development Corridors: Improved road access can boost economic growth, reduce costs, and increase output in developing countries. Impact evaluation helps in understanding the return to investment and supports policymakers design future investments as well as complementary reforms.
Road Safety: Road traffic crashes are the eighth leading cause of death globally, with 93% occurring in low- and middle-income countries. ieConnect aims to address this issue by using innovative methods to generate data and piloting various road safety interventions through rigorous impact evaluations.
Rural Roads: Impact evaluations on rural roads are crucial for policymaking as they guide project delivery, document the impact of increasing access, and prioritize policies for countries. They leverage national investment in administrative data collection, including geospatial, land registries, and high-frequency price data, along with dedicated household survey data.
Gender: One crucial component for sustainable and equitable urban transport is developing systems that serve women’s mobility needs since women and men travel differently. ieConnect works across different countries to address the constraints women face in urban mobility.
Fragile Situations: Research on the economic benefits of transport infrastructure in high fragility contexts is limited - particularly the resilience of economic agents when there is higher risk associated with the use of that infrastructure. ieConnect has conducted studies in fragile contexts, generating knowledge and lessons for progress in conflict-affected areas and lower middle-income countries.
Climate Change: Transport accounts for nearly a quarter of global energy-related CO2, growing faster than any other sector. The ieConnect program has focused specifically on measurement of air pollution, and it is looking at the important area of resilience and how innovative tools can help teams identify where to focus resources for ensuring a more resilient transport network.
COVID-19: COVID-19 response and recovery were included as an ieConnect program theme in 2020. Mobility was central to the spread of COVID-19, and understanding its patterns provided insights into how a disease might spread, and feed into decision making around how to control the situation.
Partnerships
ieConnect was launched in 2015 with funding from the UK government. The program is a collaboration between Development Impact (DIME) and the Transport Global Practice and has a shared vision of “Sustainable Mobility for All”. ieConnect leverages DIME’s “Trial-and-Adopt” technology, which aims to:
Wire-in evidence to inform policy design and baseline analysis;
Guide mid-course corrections by trialing project modalities early on to test behavioral and implementation mechanisms;
Inform scale-up and scale-down decisions by assessing the economic significance of policy effectiveness; and
Generate knowledge more broadly across communities of practice.
An important goal of the program is to increase the communities of practice in the transport research space. This has been achieved by partnering with different multilateral and bilateral organizations at the operational and research level to foster learning by doing that will lead to further generation and use of transport evidence across these institutions. Additionally, the program works with researchers from the countries where it is working and partners closely with government institutions to ensure the use and sustainability of the data and knowledge generated through the projects.
