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Development Impact Group

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Overview

Billions of dollars are invested in the transport sector (16 percent of lending by multi-lateral development banks since 2000), yet measuring how these investments translate into intended impacts is challenging.

The ieConnect for Impact program is the first transport dedicated Impact Evaluation (IE) program at the World Bank. The program aims to increase the availability and use of rigorous research and impact evaluation evidence for the selection, design, and implementation of transport infrastructure projects. The program helps realign research priorities to where development financing is spent.

Program Snapshot

? ieConnect has enabled the evaluation of over $5.7 billion in transport investment projects.

? The program focuses on urban mobility, development corridors, road safety, and rural roads with cross-cutting themes in gender, fragile situations, and climate change and the environment. 

? Priority themes include transport decarbonization, the link between transport and health, gender, urban mobility, trade, and resilient infrastructure for food security.

? 30 impact evaluations and research activities across 18 countries.

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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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. 

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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 the World Bank's Development Impact Group and the Transport Global Practice and has a shared vision of ¡°¡±. ieConnect leverages DIME¡¯s ¡°Trial-and-Adopt¡± technology, which aims to: 

  1. Wire-in evidence to inform policy design and baseline analysis;  

  2. Guide mid-course corrections by trialing project modalities early on to test behavioral and implementation mechanisms;  

  3. Inform scale-up and scale-down decisions by assessing the economic significance of policy effectiveness; and

  4. 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.

Publications

  • Sensitivity of Vulnerable Populations to Changes in Public Transport Fares, Disaggregated by Gender: The Case of Bogot¨¢ |
  • Mobility and Well-Being of Vulnerable Populations in Bogot¨¢: Gender Gaps in Urban Mobility |
  • Developing Air Quality Measurement Systems. Testing and comparing three pollution data sources in Dakar, Senegal  |
  • Measuring and Enhancing Construction Worker Welfare in Dakar  | 

Core Team

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    Senior Economist, Development Impact Group
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    Samia Ausaf
    Operations Officer, Development Impact Group
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    Economist, Development Impact Group
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    Amy Dolinger
    Analyst, Development Impact Group
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    Economist, Development Impact group
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    Research Analyst, Development Impact group
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    Data Scientist, Development Impact group