Harnessing Mobile Phone Data for Smarter Transportation and Urban Planning: Lessons from Nepal

Using Nepal as a case study, this report shows how harnessing high-resolution mobile phone data that tracks population movements can underpin evidence-based urban planning and responsive transport strategies during rapid urbanization. Highlighting the cost and limitations of traditional survey information, it draws on data from nearly 12 million trips made in Kathmandu, Pokhara, and the Lumbini–Butwal–Siddharthnagar corridor in October 2023, with per capita daily trips averaging 1.6. Analyzing technical, data quality, and privacy challenges, it shows how population-scale mobile data can be utilized to determine how to best use development financing to build context-specific, sustainable transport solutions for rapid urbanization.