The Power of Data to Improve Mobility in Latin America

This blog coincides with a new call for articles on data and policy for a special edition on data-driven sustainable mobility in Latin America. We welcome submissions before the April 28 deadline.

The world has been experiencing a significant change in the way knowledge is produced. The use of data to drive innovation is not a recent phenomenon, but rather a common practice in the market and consumer sector. Over the past decade, however, other stakeholders, including governments, civil society and international development organizations, have seen the value of using timely and reliable data to answer the most pressing questions that would bring about social benefits, including fostering sustainable and inclusive transport in cities.

According to the post-pandemic report prepared in 2021 by the “Hands on Data” initiative of CAF and Colombia’s National Planning Department (DNP), entitled “Use of data for decision-making in the public sector”, the rapid development of digitalization, new digital technologies and the data-driven economy have fueled the exponential growth of data creation and consumption worldwide (CAF, 2021). European Union estimates show that around 90% of the currently available data has been generated in the last 2 years (Mohamed & Weber, 2020). Nonetheless, while cities are making efforts to collect data, these are not necessarily being sorted, centralized, and focused on solving specific problems. According to International Data Corporation’s (IDC) estimates, by the end of 2025, 80% of the world’s data may be unstructured data.

In addition, some countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have yet to reach consensus on the importance of leveraging data to devise public policies. Furthermore, the public sector claims to be lagging significantly behind its peers in terms of data and technology. Around 43% of these organizations perceive themselves to be lagging or lagging far behind the average for Latin America and the Caribbean. This figure rises to 67% when compared to leading countries worldwide. About 40% have no digital transformation strategy, while this figure stands at 27% for the private sector (IDB, 2022).

Case in point, in Colombia, the National Data Exploitation Policy (CONPES Document 3920), found in 2017 that only 1 in 4 government agencies had allocated budget to digitalization processes, most had less than 70% of their information digitalized, half had interoperability processes with less than 3 peers and also half claimed that in their view increasing availability of open data would not solve any internal need. According to CAF, the opportunities derived from this analysis include strengthening data culture, internal competencies, availability of technological tools and high-quality data, and consolidate governance within the public sector (CAF, 2021).

To go into more detail, the transport sector is undergoing a transformation with progress in automation, electrification and digitalization of planning and operation dynamics on a human scale. The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic exposed concrete examples of these benefits as they allowed, among other things, continued productivity of people through teleworking, avoiding unnecessary commuting, increasing the use and improving conditions of public transport, and promoting the construction of infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists to reduce the risk of contagion.

Harnessing the power of more accurate data, from conceptualization to implementation through collection, planning and monitoring, underpins transformative change in the transport sector by enabling data-driven decision-making. Data limitations can be overcome by using satellite imagery, remote sensing, machine learning, and computer vision methodologies. These advances in data and technology open up new opportunities to work on assessing investments in major infrastructures and making public policy decisions.

Recent research recognizes data as an asset for the creation of social and economic value, claiming that a 15% reduction in the cost of infrastructure services could be achieved with better use of data and digital technologies, and that this could expand the GDP of Latin America and the Caribbean by 6% within 10 years (IDB, 2020).

The continuous discoveries and data availability through new collection technologies open up a space for innovative research and its applications in the global development of the transport sector. In this regard, development banks and cooperation agencies began to identify these new ways of addressing public policy challenges in a systematic, economic and transparent manner.

“Technology and data are powerful tools for designing and implementing public policies, but evidence-based policies are currently the exception rather than the rule. While cities have access to various data sources, policymakers often lack the tools and knowledge to convert data into information for better decision-making. Identifying the policy questions that need to be prioritized and answered is key for Latin American cities, not only to improve the management of their day-to-day transportation systems, but also to anticipate and build resilient cities of the future,” noted Ángel Cárdenas, Director of Infrastructure Projects for the Southern Region at CAF—development bank of Latin America.

Through the use and valorization of mobility data, CAF—development bank of Latin America—and TUMI—Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative—partnered to carry out the “TUMI Data – Data for sustainable mobility” project, to enable an environmentally-friendly digital transformation of urban mobility, and to create clean, inclusive, sustainable and livable cities.

“TUMI believes that for cities, data is a crucial enabler for making better, more informed decisions about sustainable mobility. With the development of an urban mobility data hub, we are working together with our partners to make mobility data available to cities in Africa, Latin America and Asia, and thus shape the environmentally friendly digital transformation of urban mobility,” said Lena Plikat, Transportation Policy Advisor at TUMI.

To accomplish this, we must answer the "what, who, how, when" of data to inform better a sustainable transportation policymaking, or in other words, 1) identifying the most pressing problems (through participatory methods); 2) mapping and understanding who owns and who has access to the data and what the considerations are; 3) recognizing new data collection and data analysis methods that transcend specific contexts and project-focused approaches; and 4) testing and establishing ways to use data in a timely manner to solve urgent and evolving urban and transportation policy problems.

CAF and TUMI are developing a special research collection, in partnership with Cambridge. If you are interested in learning more and how to apply to become part of this collection, click on this link. If you are interested in learning more about our work, please go to: CAF—development bank of Latin America—and TUMI-Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative.