Webinar Series: Data and Knowledge to Support Innovations, Resilience, and Inclusivity in Transport

Introduction to the series

The first webinar will introduce the series with selected snapshots highlighting what to expect from the monthly deep dive webinars:

1. Resilient transport infrastructure systems - Presented by Jim Hall, FREng - Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks, University of Oxford
2. Data collection and research methodologies using innovative technology - Presented by Sveta Milusheva, PhD - Senior Economist, Development Impact, World Bank
3. Informal transport in the global south - Presented by Neil Ebenezer, PhD - Team Leader, High Volume Transport (HVT) Applied Research Programme
4. Impact of climate change on Transport - Presented by Neil Ebenezer, PhD and Sveta Milusheva, PhD
5. Gender, inclusion and sustainable transport - Presented by Girija Borker, PhD - Research Economist, Development Impact, World Bank

Mrs. Elizabeth Jones leads the Transport Research portfolio for the UK Government’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).  She is the Senior Transport Adviser within FCDO and joined the UK Government in 1997. 

Mrs. Elizabeth Jones has more than 25 years’ experience working on international development globally.  She has worked and lived in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Bangladesh and most recently for four years in Fiji.  She has extensive experience working with partner governments, bilaterals, multi-laterals and civil society spanning transport, water supply & sanitation, urban development and anti-corruption.  She has previously held positions on the UK Institute of Civil Engineer’s Transport Journal Panel, Chaired the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility Board, been a founding Board member for Sustainable Mobility for All (SuM4All) and Board member for the University of Birmingham’s Road Management & Engineering MSc.

Neil is the Director of a consultancy company that has a particular focus on the impact of transport on human health, having worked over the last 30 years across the health and transport sectors. He has developed a portfolio career and is currently the Team Leader of the High-Volume Transport Applied Research Programme (HVT), an £18million programme funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). HVT undertakes research into the complex issues of sustainable transport development across Africa and South Asia

He has also held various posts within the civil service, including the Head of Science and Innovation at the Department of Transport (DfT)  where he represented the UK on the Transport Programme Committee of Horizon 2020 and led a team at DfT on improving access to research and horizon scanning.

Before joining the University of Oxford, Prof Hall held academic positions in the Newcastle University and the University of Bristol. He is internationally recognised for his research on risk analysis and decision making under uncertainty for water resource systems, flood and coastal risk management, infrastructure systems and adaptation to climate change. Professor Hall is a member of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, is a Commissioner of the National Infrastructure Commission and is Vice President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

Prof Hall led the development of the National Infrastructure Systems Model (NISMOD), which was used for the UK's first National Infrastructure Assessment and for analysis of the resilience of energy, transport, digital and water networks in Great Britain. He conceived of, and now chairs, the UK's Data and Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure (DAFNI). His systems analysis methods have been applied worldwide, including in Argentina, Bangladesh, China, Curacao, Jamaica, Kenya, St Lucia, Tanzania, Uganda and Vietnam, and globally. He has published more than 160 articles in peer reviewed journals, and has published four books, including, The Future of National Infrastructure: A System-of-Systems Approach, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016.

Girija Borker is a development economist working primarily on gender, violence, and transport in urban areas. A large part of her current research studies the economic consequences of sexual harassment in public spaces and assesses potential solutions' effectiveness on women’s physical and economic mobility such as police patrolling, a reliable reporting system, and access to subsidized public transit. Girija has a Masters in Economics from the University of Cambridge, UK, an MPhil from Toulouse School of Economics, France, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Brown University.

Sveta Milusheva leads the ieConnect program of impact evaluations focused on transport investments and within this program leads the work on urban mobility. Her research interests include infrastructure and information & communication technologies, population mobility, health and gender. In particular, her work focuses on the application of new big data sources, such as mobile phone data and crowdsourced data, to study questions in development and to evaluate the impact of development interventions. She received her PhD and MA in Economics from Brown University and her BA in Economics and International Studies from Emory University.

1. About ieConnect

2. About HVT

3. Resilient Transport - Oxford

4. Innovative technology - ieConnect

5. Informal Transport - HVT

6. Climate change - HVT

7. Gender - ieConnect - HVT

Resilient Transport Infrastructure Systems

Professor Jim Hall will set out principles for climate risk analysis of transport networks, which identifies critical hotspots of exposure to climate risks. He will demonstrate how this information can be used to prioritize resilience interventions. His talk will be based on a large-scale analysis of the transport networks in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The analysis is embedded in an open access “Decision Support Systems for Resilient Strategic Transport Networks in Low Income Countries”, developed as part of the FCDO funded High Volume Transport Programme. The decision support system is built around an interactive web platform and aims to support investment decisions and options selection for long-distance strategic land transport networks exposed to climate risks. Pamela Acheng will explain recent developments in the analysis, including road deterioration and landslides.

The World Bank’s ieConnect team will also present an analysis of the impacts and recovery from the devastating 2022 floods in Pakistan using big data sources such as mobility data and satellite imagery. The team will also present evidence from Mozambique demonstrating the importance of resilient transport systems.

Phil graduated with a BSc (Hons) and MSc from the University of Natal and a PhD from the University of Pretoria, 1989, all in Engineering Geology. He worked at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria, South Africa (and for 2 years in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman), for 37 years with projects in 27 countries. He has been mainly involved in research and implementation of materials aspects related to roads, road construction, transportation geotechnics and climate resilience of the transportation network. He retired in 2013 and is now a specialist consultant in geomaterials and roads with Paige-Green Consulting (Pty) Ltd and Extraordinary Professor in the faculty of Civil Engineering at the Tshwane University of Technology. He has served on the boards of various international journals for many years and is a registered Professional Natural Scientist, member of various professional societies and a Fellow of the SAIEG and SAICE and Life Fellow of the Geological Society of South Africa GSSA).

Before joining the University of Oxford, Prof Hall held academic positions in the Newcastle University and the University of Bristol. He is internationally recognised for his research on risk analysis and decision making under uncertainty for water resource systems, flood and coastal risk management, infrastructure systems and adaptation to climate change. Professor Hall is a member of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, is a Commissioner of the National Infrastructure Commission and is Vice President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

Prof Hall led the development of the National Infrastructure Systems Model (NISMOD), which was used for the UK's first National Infrastructure Assessment and for analysis of the resilience of energy, transport, digital and water networks in Great Britain. He conceived of, and now chairs, the UK's Data and Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure (DAFNI). His systems analysis methods have been applied worldwide, including in Argentina, Bangladesh, China, Curacao, Jamaica, Kenya, St Lucia, Tanzania, Uganda and Vietnam, and globally. He has published more than 160 articles in peer reviewed journals, and has published four books, including, The Future of National Infrastructure: A System-of-Systems Approach, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016.

Pamela's current research focuses on the development of a decision tool for the resilience of transport networks to climate change. Her research shall use remote sensing satellite data to investigate the vulnerability of selected transport networks in Eastern Africa and use the results of this analysis to conduct a transport disruption and economic trade flow model. The outcomes of her work will aid in the development of a theoretical framework for a decision tool for climate-resilient transport networks.

Before joining Oxford in 2022, Pamela was an Assistant Lecturer at the College of Engineering, Design, Art, and Technology at Makerere University. Pamela has been the coordinator for e-learning for the School of Built Environment at Makerere University and an Assistant Research Coordinator for Undergraduate Research. She has also worked with the Ministry of Works and Transport, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative where she played important roles in the design, supervision, implementation, and monitoring of infrastructure projects.

Robert Marty is a Data Scientist in the Development Impact (DIME) Group at the World Bank where his work focuses on impact evaluations of transport corridors and road safety. In particular, his work focuses on leveraging innovative data sources for impact evaluations, such as satellite imagery, crowdsourced data and private sector data sources. Prior to joining the World Bank he worked at the AidData Center for Development Policy. He holds an MS in Computational Operations Research and a Master of Public Policy from the College of William and Mary.

1. Resilient Transport_Jim Hall

2. Impacts of Climate Change in the HDM-4_Pamela Acheng

3. Resilient Transport_Mozambique and Pakistan_Robert Marty

Data Collection and Research Methodologies Using Innovative Technology

New technologies, big data sources and significant advances in computing power have revolutionized the data available to support more effective transport policies and projects. This session explores the latest approaches and innovations for gathering data, highlighting work from ieConnect and HVT focused on developing innovative and easily accessible, reliable data in low- and middle-income countries where data is often limited. Examples from ieConnect will include the case of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, demonstrating how CCTV footage and computer vision can be used to develop road safety indicators to help prioritize interventions and assess their economic benefits; applications of smartcard and mobile phone data to study mobility in Bogota, Colombia; the use of crowdsourced, mobile app, GPS sensor and administrative data in Kenya to evaluate policies and support road safety planning; and the use of different satellite datasets to evaluate the impact of transport corridors. The projects presented from HVT range from the use of computer vision to detect and count transport-related objects in street-level imagery to supporting the Transport Data Commons Initiative (TDCI) - a forum committed to improving access, sharing and analysis of transportation data by establishing an open data platform for transport.

Mrs. Elizabeth Jones leads the Transport Research portfolio for the UK Government’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).  She is the Senior Transport Adviser within FCDO and joined the UK Government in 1997. 

Mrs. Elizabeth Jones has more than 25 years’ experience working on international development globally.  She has worked and lived in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Bangladesh and most recently for four years in Fiji.  She has extensive experience working with partner governments, bilaterals, multi-laterals and civil society spanning transport, water supply & sanitation, urban development and anti-corruption.  She has previously held positions on the UK Institute of Civil Engineer’s Transport Journal Panel, Chaired the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility Board, been a founding Board member for Sustainable Mobility for All (SuM4All) and Board member for the University of Birmingham’s Road Management & Engineering MSc.

Neil is the Director of a consultancy company that has a particular focus on the impact of transport on human health, having worked over the last 30 years across the health and transport sectors. He has developed a portfolio career and is currently the Team Leader of the High-Volume Transport Applied Research Programme (HVT), an £18million programme funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). HVT undertakes research into the complex issues of sustainable transport development across Africa and South Asia

He has also held various posts within the civil service, including the Head of Science and Innovation at the Department of Transport (DfT)  where he represented the UK on the Transport Programme Committee of Horizon 2020 and led a team at DfT on improving access to research and horizon scanning.

Sveta Milusheva leads the ieConnect program of impact evaluations focused on transport investments and within this program leads the work on urban mobility. Her research interests include infrastructure and information & communication technologies, population mobility, health and gender. In particular, her work focuses on the application of new big data sources, such as mobile phone data and crowdsourced data, to study questions in development and to evaluate the impact of development interventions. She received her PhD and MA in Economics from Brown University and her BA in Economics and International Studies from Emory University.

Robert Marty is a Data Scientist in the Development Impact (DIME) Group at the World Bank where his work focuses on impact evaluations of transport corridors and road safety. In particular, his work focuses on leveraging innovative data sources for impact evaluations, such as satellite imagery, crowdsourced data and private sector data sources. Prior to joining the World Bank he worked at the AidData Center for Development Policy. He holds an MS in Computational Operations Research and a Master of Public Policy from the College of William and Mary.

Nino Pkhikidze is an Economist at the World Bank Transport Global Knowledge Unit. Currently she is working on projects related to economic geography, impact evaluation of transport projects on health, education and poverty, and transport decarbonization and climate policies. Prior to joining the World Bank, she held research positions at the Center for Development Research at University of Bonn in Germany, at the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy of the Netherlands, and GeoWel Research in Georgia. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Bonn, Germany.

1. Innovative data_HVT

2. Bogota work_ieConnect

3. Kenya work_ieConnect

4. Satellite data_ieConnect

5. VIDA Tool_Transport Global Unit

The Transition to Sustainable Transport

Accounting for nearly a quarter of global energy-related carbon emissions, the transport sector is critical to achieving the ambitious Paris Agreement. While low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have historically emitted lower transport emissions, their growing economies are increasing their carbon footprint. Transitioning to sustainable transport is complex, requiring balancing economic growth, addressing resource limitations, and ensuring social inclusion.

This session will present HVT’s new research that highlights specific aspects of transport in Africa and South Asia that offer opportunities for increasing climate resilient transport. This includes improving access to climate finance, developing a Transport Decarbonisation Index, building climate resilient roads, and developing active mobility strategies.  

Additionally, as countries invest in greener transport, measuring the impacts of these investments is crucial. The ieConnect for Impact Program will present research on comparing alternative methods for collecting data focused on air pollution and provide a framework for considering measurement in the climate space more broadly.

The webinar will explore how transport can meet the needs of LMICs at the policy level and spotlight the latest research into why climate finance isn’t reaching LMICs at the rate it needs to and how to address this gap.

Neil is the Director of a consultancy company that has a particular focus on the impact of transport on human health, having worked over the last 30 years across the health and transport sectors. He has developed a portfolio career and is currently the Team Leader of the High-Volume Transport Applied Research Programme (HVT), an £18million programme funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). HVT undertakes research into the complex issues of sustainable transport development across Africa and South Asia

He has also held various posts within the civil service, including the Head of Science and Innovation at the Department of Transport (DfT)  where he represented the UK on the Transport Programme Committee of Horizon 2020 and led a team at DfT on improving access to research and horizon scanning.

Sveta Milusheva leads the ieConnect program of impact evaluations focused on transport investments and within this program leads the work on urban mobility. Her research interests include infrastructure and information & communication technologies, population mobility, health and gender. In particular, her work focuses on the application of new big data sources, such as mobile phone data and crowdsourced data, to study questions in development and to evaluate the impact of development interventions. She received her PhD and MA in Economics from Brown University and her BA in Economics and International Studies from Emory University.

Yiqian is a Climate and Electric Mobility Manager at WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. She works to assist governments in meeting their Paris Climate Agreement goals through electrification and transport decarbonization strategies. She coordinates and leads research projects, data analysis and modelling, stakeholder outreach, and on-the-ground support on the topics of electric mobility as well as wider transport-climate issues following the Avoid-Shift-Improve approach. Prior to joining WRI, Yiqian worked as the Sustainable Mobility Senior Officer for ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability, a global city-to-city network. She led a portfolio of projects on sustainable urban mobility (e-mobility, active mobility, urban freight) and developed solutions and services for local governments in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Yiqian holds a M.A. in Erasmus Mundus Global Studies from the University of Vienna and the University of Leipzig, and a B.S. in Public Administration from the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.  Outside of work, Yiqian is an avid runner who enjoys cycling and combat sports. She lives in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Nikola Medimorec is the Director of Data Analysis and Research at SLOCAT, where he leads efforts in gathering and analysing key data on transport, climate change and sustainable development. His efforts lead the design and approaches applied to SLOCAT’s knowledge products, including the SLOCAT Transport, Climate and Sustainability Global Status Report, which provides critical insights on the state of climate action and sustainability in the transport sector. He is also the key focal point from SLOCAT on the assessment work for the GIZ-SLOCAT NDC Transport Tracker, for which he has conducted dozens of studies on Nationally Determined Contributions and long-term low-emission development strategies. Nikola holds a Master's in Urban Geography from Seoul National University and a Bachelor’s in Applied Geography from Trier University. He is currently based in Seoul, South Korea.

Jacob (he/him/his pronouns) is Senior Director, Global Program at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. He manages data collection, reporting, and evaluation for ITDP globally. He specializes in strategic research that drives the conversation about sustainable transportation and development, assessing new technologies and identifying new, quantifiable ways of meeting program goals. Jacob has been the lead researcher for many of ITDP’s most recognized publications, including the Bike Share Planning Guide, the BRT Standard, and A Global High Shift Cycling Scenario and Three Revolutions in Urban Transport, quantifying the multi-trillion-dollar savings in transportation costs and massive reductions in CO2 emissions possible through more sustainable urban transport. He also oversaw the production of ITDP’s People Near Transit report, which developed and measured an international metric for rapid transit coverage, which has since been adopted by city, national, and international governments. Jacob has been responsible for data collection analysis—and, often, metric development—for ITDP projects worldwide, including a walkability study in five African cities and a BRT project in Nairobi, Kenya. Within the World Bank’s Sustainable Mobility for All program, Jacob co-chairs the Urban Access working group, which is developing sustainable urban transport indicators that are shared across multiple international institutions. Jacob has a master’s in urban planning from McGill University (Montreal) and a bachelor’s in civil engineering from Columbia University.

1. Unlocking Climate Finance_WRI

2. Transport Decarbonisation Index_SLOCAT

4. Air Quality_ieConnect

The Value of Informal Transport in Sub-Saharan Africa

The informal transport industry is complex, heterogeneous and multi-sectoral in nature. But the sector also offers real benefits and competitive value. The scale and reach of informal transport service networks mean that Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) cities would simply not function without them. Yet policy interventions to improve operating environments for informal public transport vehicles have been relatively few. In this session, ⁠HVT will explore how we can understand and better enable a more efficient, low carbon and safe transport network for the cities of SSA, working proactively with the Informal Public Transport sector. This includes examining the potential for integration of formal and informal public transport services at interchanges. The presentation will also touch on how HVT’s research is contributing to more climate-resilient transport by providing knowledge and capacity to support evidence-based choices.

The ⁠ieConnect team will present its work in Lagos, Nigeria. The project aims to deepen the understanding on how Lagos could be set on a greener and better mobility path for the future by providing analytics on passengers’ choices, public and informal transit, and evidence on how to regulate informal transit.

Mr. Joseph Haule is a Transport Economist with 36 years postgraduate experience in the road sector with emphasis on policy, planning, road sector institutional reform, road management and financing. Currently Joseph is an independent consultant after retiring from the public sector in 2016. Prior to becoming a consultant, Mr. Haule was the first CEO of the Roads Fund Board in Tanzania from 2000 when it was established to 2016. Thereafter, he was appointed to Chair the Governing Board of the Roads Fund. Mr. Haule is currently assisting the High-Volume Transport (HVT) Applied Research Programme in dissemination of its research outputs to help policy makers and practitioners make informed decisions in making transport become greener, more accessible, more affordable more inclusive and safer. He is affiliated to reputable international institutions including the International Road Federation (IRF) where he is a member of the Governing Board since 2013 as well as World Roads Association (PIARC) where he was a member of the Executive Committee between 2010 and 2016. In 2017 Mr. Haule was bestowed Honorary Membership of the World Road Association in recognition to His exemplary contribution to the roads sector. Between 2008 and 2016 He was a visiting Speaker in   Road Financing to the Senior Roads Executive Program of the University of Birmingham in UK. Mr. Haule was the Team Leader of the Research for Rural Access Program (ReCAP) between 2019 and 2020 and before that He was the Chairman of its Steering Committee for Africa.

Neil is the Director of a consultancy company that has a particular focus on the impact of transport on human health, having worked over the last 30 years across the health and transport sectors. He has developed a portfolio career and is currently the Team Leader of the High-Volume Transport Applied Research Programme (HVT), an £18million programme funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). HVT undertakes research into the complex issues of sustainable transport development across Africa and South Asia

He has also held various posts within the civil service, including the Head of Science and Innovation at the Department of Transport (DfT)  where he represented the UK on the Transport Programme Committee of Horizon 2020 and led a team at DfT on improving access to research and horizon scanning.

Geetika Nagpal (PhD) is a Research Economist in the Development Impact (DIME) Group at the World Bank. Her research is at the intersection of urban and development economics, focusing on housing markets and transportation infrastructure. Her work combines new sources of granular data with natural experiments to understand how private actors respond to government regulations and shape cities. She received her PhD in Economics from Brown University and holds an MSc in Economics for Development from the University of Oxford.

Joaquín Romero de Tejada is an anthropologist, social educator, and specialist in active mobility and tradicional public transport, having worked professionally in this field since 2008 in Spain and since 2013 in Mozambique. In this country, he has collaborated with various national and international stakeholders on SUM policies, traditional public transportation, mapping, synergy seeking, and the consolidation of the Urban Mobility sector, digitalization, etc. He is a founding member of the Mozambique Mobility and Transportation Observatory (OMT). Currently, he is part of the PIU of the BRT project within the framework of the Maputo Metropolitan Transport Agency funded by the World Bank.

Muizz is a Research and Evaluation Specialist at the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA), contributing significantly to transformative transportation initiatives such as the World Bank-funded Lagos Urban Transport Projects (LUTP), the Agence Française de Développement (AFD)-supported Lagos Strategic Transport Master Plan (STMP), and the Lagos Blue and Red Rail Mass Transit (LRMT) projects.

At LAMATA, Muizz leads various research initiatives focused on sustainable urban mobility, including Non-Motorized Transportation, Air Quality Monitoring, Women’s Safety, and Inclusive Interchanges. He also serves as a co-lead for the Annual LAMATA Mobility Conference in Lagos and manages projects end-to-end, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives while driving advancements in sustainable urban transportation

Tim Durant is City and Regional planner with twenty years of experience and an Associate Director at SLR, based in Bonn. After working in the UK on a range of spatial planning and major infrastructure assignments, he moved to Germany and became involved in research and demonstration projects focussing on sustainable mobility and logistics, partnering with cities across Europe and Africa. Tim coordinated the HVT TRANSITIONS project, which undertook research on informal public transport services in Accra, Kumasi, Freetown, Cape Town and Maputo, and developed a Routemap setting out how these could be supported to provide low emission, affordable and safe mobility in the future. He is currently coordinating the HVT Inclusive Interchanges project, which involves applying a ‘Design Brief’ appraisal and guidance document to two case study interchanges in Lagos.

Jacques Pretorius is a registered Geomatics professional with over 20 years of experience in geospatial solutions and GIS project management experience in geospatial solutions and GIS project management. His expertise encompasses data collection, processing, quality assurance, and analysis to deliver actionable insights in the geospatial environment. Jacques excels at designing, testing, and implementing spatial solutions that meet complex business information and delivery requirements, while prioritising automation and maintaining data integrity.

Currently serving as Geomatics Specialist at GoMetro, Jacques leads projects involving geospatial data integration and analysis, including impactful initiatives such as bus route profiling and capacity planning for urban mobility projects. His proficiency spans advanced GIS workflows, remote sensing, and cartography, backed by hands-on experience with tools such as ArcGIS and QGIS. With a commitment to innovation and operational efficiency, Jacques is dedicated to leveraging cutting-edge geospatial technologies to address challenges and drive sustainable solutions.

1. Paratransit_GoMetro

2. Transitions_SLR

3. Transitions_OMT Mozambique

4. Inclusive_Interchanges_LAMATA

5. Lagos_ieConect

Gender, Inclusion and Sustainable Transport

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