Her city’s digital twin
Grace Kagho set up UrbanEcho to create the basis for sustainable urban planning in low-income countries. Her goal: a detailed digital twin of cities and their residents.
While living in Lagos in Nigeria, Grace Kagho often found herself waiting at the bus stop for an express bus that may or may not come on time; and sometimes she waited for up to an hour. “That made me think it must be possible to plan the transport system better in a country like Nigeria. I just didn’t know how,” she recalls, describing the initial spark that led to her startup UrbanEcho.
At the time, the young woman had just completed her Bachelor’s degree in computer engineering at Covenant University in Nigeria. She was about to start a Master’s programme at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, inspired by her love for anime and her desire to explore different societies. Throughout her studies, the question of how to solve Lagos’ traffic situation never left her mind. She had the chance to come to Zurich for three months as a visiting researcher at ETH’s Institute for Transport Planning and Systems – one of the world’s top research centres in the field – where she could simulate Lagos’ transport system on a computer for the first time.
“I was amazed by the possibilities that arose, but I also saw many challenges. For one, high-quality data for Lagos is scarce; for another, the transport system in developing regions is very different to that in Switzerland,” Grace Kagho explains. “We have motorbikes, for example, that people use like taxis to hail a ride, or minivans that pick up and drop off up to six people at different locations. To depict all these options, I’d need a digital twin that covers the local context of each city.”
Impact in Lagos and beyond
Grace Kagho’s passion for her project research was further fuelled by her three months in Zurich. In 2019, she returned to ETH for her doctorate, with the plan of developing her digital twin solution. However, the Coronavirus pandemic made it so difficult to gather data from Lagos that she opted for an alternative project. Fortunately, the delay turned out to have its advantages. “I had the opportunity to work on studies on the mobility behaviour of the Swiss population during the pandemic. The way we were able to use these models to simulate scenarios gave me new ideas for developing UrbanEcho,” Grace Kagho notes.
“I broadened my focus and decided to create a model of a digital traveller that would work globally, a virtual representation that mirrors human interaction in real-world urban environments. Using this model, we can not only capture snapshots of mobility behaviour but also of other factors such as housing situations or energy consumption. This means we’ll be able to test the effects of different policy measures digitally in future and adjust planning accordingly. And design the kind of city that I and future generations want to live in.”
“I want to help design the kind of city that I and future generations actually want to live in.”Grace Kagho
Growth with vision
Grace Kagho’s goal is to develop models for Lagos that can be easily adapted for other low and middle-income countries by using advanced methods like machine learning. UrbanEcho holds immense potential for the populations of these countries in which cities are growing rapidly.
Whether it’s selecting a location for a new school or constructing new roads, simulations could ensure that the resources available are used to the maximum benefit of local communities. Potential customers include not only urban planners and policymakers, but also humanitarian organisations such as UNICEF and the United Nations (UN).
The young researcher is supported in her endeavour by a donor-funded Social Impact Pioneer Fellowship at ETH. “Projects in developing regions require patience and time. The fellowship allows me to give my project that time. It’s a springboard for realising my vision and it opens the door to invaluable networks,” Grace Kagho says, who herself founded a non-profit educational platform for young schoolchildren in Nigeria ten years ago. “I’m proud to use my expertise to create innovative solutions for rising cities and the people who live in them.”