Using machine learning to accelerate investment in sustainable infrastructure

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Barriers to sustainable investment
The opportunity to innovate
Development of a prototype for ISIT
Towards impact
Download project outputs

Introduction

Project details

Title: Using machine learning to accelerate investment in sustainable infrastructure

Project lead: Global Infrastructure Basel (GIB) Foundation

Project partners: Pathway Technologies and Services Pvt. Ltd.

Duration: October 2021 - June 2022

Contact: Louis Downing - louis.downing@gib-foundation.org

Co-funded through the ISEAL Innovations Fund, which is supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO and through Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH

View down a red bridge, photo by Avinash Patel from Pexels

Barriers to sustainable investment

SDG 9 highlights the critical need to build resilient and sustainable infrastructure. A record high investment of 7 trillion USD per year is required to meet basic needs. Unfortunately, sustainability characteristics of projects are highly complex, context-specific and often inaccessible to investors without a large investment of time and expertise. With sustainability certification in the sector only just starting, it is very difficult for investors across the world to identify and invest in SDG-aligned projects.

Dam in desert, photo by Enric Cruz Lopez from Pexels

The opportunity to innovate

Certification is not the only way that sustainability systems in the sector can help accelerate investment towards sustainable projects. A recent collaboration between the four leading infrastructure sustainability standards established the Aligned Indicators for Sustainable Infrastructure (AISI). GIB saw an opportunity to combine these indicators with artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the assessment of a large volume of potential projects, to mobilize additional private capital towards more sustainable projects in emerging markets and developing economies.

Train at station, photo by Darshak Pandya from Pexels

Development of a prototype for ISIT

Combining AI techniques and the big satellite data repository of the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform, GIB and Pathway Technologies built a web-based prototype of the Infrastructure Sustainability Intelligence Tool (ISIT) that produces a traffic light evaluation of infrastructure projects, aligned with the SDGs. The geographic focus of the prototype was on India, a country where current levels of infrastructure provision lag chronically behind but that plans to invest 2 trillion USD in infrastructure projects over the next 4 years.

Find more information on the methodology behind the prototype in the document attached below.

Solar panels on a green field, photo by American Public Power Association on Unsplash

Towards impact

GIB intend to refine the prototype and integrate it into a new digital platform targeted towards project developers and investors dedicated to future proof infrastructure, as well as to expand its geographical scope. Countries all over the world are in a race to digitize their data and this trend will only increase the need and the potential for tools designed to combine different sources of data.

By making it easier for investors to identify sustainable infrastructure, the tool will not only drive investment into those projects but also create an incentive for developers to boost the sustainability performance of their projects. This could be a game changer for the infrastructure sector.

Download project outputs

Public Information - Infrastructure Sustainability Intelligence Tool | GIB

A public summary explaining the need for the Infrastructure Sustainability Intelligence Tool (ISIT), the value it brings to infrastructure stakeholders, and its methodology.

ISIT was developed by GIB as part of a project supported by the ISEAL Innovations Fund.

Public Information - Infrastructure Sustainability Intelligence Tool | GIB1.65 MB

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