Meet the new Social Impact Fellow Grace Kagho

Grace is a doctoral student at the Institute for Transport Planning and Systems, where she researches transport systems through the design of large-scale agent-based models. With the support of the Social Impact Fellowship, Grace strives to advance her project UrbanEcho, which entails a digital twin technology for sustainable urban planning in lowe-income countries.

By the year 2050, it is expected that 99% of the world’s population growth will take place in low- and middle-income countries. Despite this immense potential, business and development opportunities in these regions are under-explored. The main difficulty is the lack of readily available data for planning in pivotal sectors like transportation, energy, and healthcare. Existing data is often expensive, infrequently collected, and scattered across various entities, resulting in wasteful duplication of resources. This makes it hard to use the data to extract insights for policies that can effectively solve urban challenges such as traffic congestion, high travel costs, safety issues, and environmental problems.

UrbanEcho aims to provide a digital replica (digital twin) of cities in low-income regions that mirror the city's infrastructure, transport network, housing, and urban facilities as well as the population’s travel behaviour. The result will be a digital platform where various transport and city data are collected, organized, and used to design models that are easily accessible to urban planners and policymakers. The platform would thus facilitate the planning of strategies and innovations to improve transport systems and urban environments.