Primary Theme: Energy & Environment

Over 15% of humanity has no access to electricity, and far more have unreliable access that precludes most productive energy uses that are beneficial for improving economic prosperity, health and education. Decision-makers require information to determine the optimal strategies for deploying energy resources to decide where to prioritize development and whether that development should be through grid expansion, microgrids or distributed generation. However, two critical data sources for such planning—who has access to electricity and the location of electric infrastructure—are often unavailable or overly time-consuming to collect and maintain.