Decarbonization in The Transport Sector: Building Better Sustainable Policies with Data Insights

As cities grow rapidly, so do their infrastructure development needs. New trends in urbanization, population growth, and economic development are putting pressure on governments to maintain and update municipal infrastructure, especially transport.

The transport industry, one of the biggest contributors of CO2, contributes to around 37% of global carbon emissions. In India alone, 2,597 metric tonnes of CO2 are being released into the atmosphere due to burning fossil fuels, which is a staggering 6.8% of global CO2 emissions . Therefore it becomes more important for governments to prioritize the development of infrastructure projects that support a transition to low-emission economies, and foster collaboration between private sector and academic partners to accelerate climate-resilient growth.

Digitization and technology can help hasten the construction of these infrastructure projects, while enhancing operating efficiencies, resilience, and adaptability. Data-driven technologies and solutions have the potential to revolutionize the way we approach transportation. The Indian government is actively pursuing a sustainable development pathway by prioritizing renewable energy and electric mobility to create sustainable transportation.

Pivoting to more sustainable and efficient transportation holds the key to addressing emissions. However, it takes more than a simple shift to electric vehicles – driving sustainability across the transportation sector requires well-informed policies backed by targets and data.

Driving better policy making with data

Governments need insights on current transport and environmental trends to develop effective policies – which is why data is such an essential resource today. The ability to collect, manage, and analyze data in real-time can help governments accelerate the move to sustainable transportation and respond more proactively to issues.

Identifying the right metrics and data sources for analysis can help governments obtain deeper, actionable intelligence on the transport sector’s impact to the environment – like revealing the biggest sources of emissions, or areas in the country which need upgrades to their transport infrastructure.

This knowledge also supports governments in informed decision-making when planning new policies and solutions to address issues, or how to prioritize resources to drive change. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) are actively collecting data related to traffic, vehicle registrations, and emissions which will help in understanding travel patterns, identifying congestion hotspots, and formulating targeted policies and interventions. In addition to this, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) is responsible for controlling and preventing pollution in India. It collects data on air quality, including pollutants emitted by vehicles. By analyzing this data, the CPCB helps in formulating policies to reduce vehicle emissions, such as promoting the adoption of electric vehicles, improving fuel quality, and implementing emission standards.

Other agencies include, NITI Aayog who is a policy think tank of the Indian government that focuses on sustainable development and economic planning. It has been actively involved in promoting sustainable transportation through initiatives like the National Electric Mobility Mission Plan (NEMMP) and the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) program. NITI Aayog uses data analysis and modelling to assess the impact of policies and suggest measures for sustainable transportation.

Achieving success with real-time data requires planning ahead

Collecting and using data in real-time at scale is no easy feat. While collecting data the government often face challenges in the aggregation, integration, and analysis of it.

Many struggle with making sense of the data at scale. To get a holistic understanding of progress of sustainability in transport, governments need to integrate petabytes worth of unstructured and structured data – from vehicular emissions to real-time traffic data – into a single source of truth.

Data is often siloed across numerous cloud and on-premises environments and owned by different organizations. Getting them to openly share data in a consistent and secure way can be a challenge. Many existing traditional IT infrastructures are also typically ill-equipped to handle the management and analysis of such huge amounts of data.

Without the deployment of modern data architectures, like data mesh, data fabric, and data lakehouse, analyzing this sea of transport and sustainability data requires enormous compute resources and time - taking days or more to complete. This hinders companies from analyzing data in real-time, and often results in overrunning budgets and outdated intelligence.

To address these challenges, government needs a well-equipped data integration and management platform to aggregate and integrate data from various sources, such as databases, data warehouses, and streaming systems. It will help them gain a holistic understanding of their operations, enabling them to develop sustainable policies based on accurate information. Additionally, the Indian policymakers need to enforce good data governance practices so that data collected is clean, anonymized, compliant, and ready for analysis – and to ensure that there are security and governance controls in place that grant the appropriate levels of access to users and collaborators inside and outside government.

Governments are in the driver’s seat on the road to sustainability

There is a long way to go in the move to sustainable infrastructure, but governments can take a good first step by using data to enhance sustainability in the transport sector.

With India committing to achieve complete carbon neutrality by 2050 , decarbonization becomes a crucial factor to it. The government’s inclination towards data-driven policy will play a vital role in achieving the above commitment. Leveraging real-time data, predictive analytics and tools like artificial intelligence can help governments accelerate this transition and amplify the impact of sustainable policies.

However, governments need to remember that working with all these technologies requires a strong data foundation. Insights are only as good as the data used, and only with good insights can governments develop policies that put society on the road to a sustainable future.

Author: Piyush Agarwal, SE Leader, Cloudera