“What bothered me most in Lagos was the traffic congestion. I never knew when a bus would come”, says Grace Kagho. Lagos, whilst already enormous, is one of the fastest-growing metropolises in the entire world. However, the city has long struggled with its public infrastructure. Kagho is a researcher and founder, originally from Nigeria. Alongside ETH Zurich, she’s developing a digital twin of her hometown.
According to the World Bank, Lagos is “one of the world’s most difficult cities to move around.” On average, commuters spend four hours a day commuting. This not only has a huge impact on quality of life, but also economic productivity in this important financial and commercial hub.
Growing up, Kagho was always interested in tech. As a young girl, she wanted to be a pilot and aeronautical engineer. This curiosity took her to university first in Nigeria, and then to Japan’s Tokyo Institute of Technology, where she earned a Master’s degree in Engineering.
It was there, amongst Japan’s famously and fastidiously functional urban spaces, that her interest in resilient cities was sparked. If public infrastructure can work here, why can’t it work in Lagos? Thus spurred a dream of a digitised, optimised transportation network in her home city that, thanks to an exchange program at ETH Zurich, came a vital step closer to realisation.
Why is better transport so important?
Transport is a major sector where global carbon emissions are still trending upward. Our urban populations are rising quickly, which means that demands on our cities are under increasing pressure.
Poor roads mean more time in cars, as journeys take longer on uneven surfaces. Idling engines in traffic jams release concentrated heat and pollutants. A single bus could take dozens of cars off the road, but if the buses are unreliable due to poor infrastructure, they become unfeasable alternatives to cars.
Many governments are increasingly offering subsidies for electric vehicles. But, if you’re going to be stuck in traffic for hours, your battery might not last the journey. Even without going into the profound, overarching benefits of public transport over traditional car use, the environmental benefits of less congested roads is clear.
The birth of UrbanEcho
While in Zurich, Kagho pioneered the use of agent-based modelling to simulate Lagos traffic. This computational approach analyses the movements and interactions of ‘autonomous agents’, such as individuals or groups. It then decodes the behaviours and rules driving specific outcomes. Essentially, it turns urban planning into a “living lab”.
Instead of just looking at cars on a road, Kagho’s model simulates the logic of the people inside them. It allows planners to see how, for example, a small change in a bus schedule might ripple out to impact the lives of Lagos’s millions of commuters. Her research earned her the ETH Social Impact Pioneer Fellowship, which allowed Kagho to found her company, UrbanEcho, in 2025.
UrbanEcho develops digital twins for cities. It combines population, demographic and behavioural data to create a synthetic population which can then be used to simulate mobility in various scenarios. These scenarios make it easier for local decision-makers to develop sustainable strategies and improve urban transportation systems. “My goal is to make data-driven solutions accessible worldwide to address challenges in urban areas”, says Kagho.
Global expansion
After a successful start, UrbanEcho has since moved beyond Lagos’s borders. Multiple cities—Seville, Dar Es Salaam, Nairobi—are now available on the platform. Bogotá, in particular, was an important addition. Rapidly emerging as a Latin American hub for urban innovation, a collaboration between UrbanEcho and Bogotá Científica is already progressing.
The project focuses on structured scenario domains, including the e-mobility transition, mapping fleet electrification pathways and charging infrastructure and flood resilience to assist climate adaptation for vulnerable areas. The initiative also addresses urban security through spatial safety pattern analysis and road safety via behavioural modelling of crash risks.
What is a digital twin?
The “digital twin” is an exact digital representation of a real product or process and reflects the state of its physical counterpart at any point in time. To do this, the AI-based technology requires real-time data about the nature of the object being mapped and about its complex interactions with the environment. This data then allows for ongoing adaptation of the imaged object.
This has several advantages: With the digital twin, scientists can test concepts before investing resources in implementing them, and real processes can be designed more efficiently.
A new toolkit for planners
After logging in, users enter a spatially rich interface where different layers of the urban system (movement, accessibility, demographics, land use and infrastructure) can all be explored. Their AI ‘Co-Planner’ allows users to run sophisticated simulations using accessible language, meaning that no technical expertise is required. Users can see right away how reachable key destinations are under different assumptions. As you adjust views or parameters, the platform updates dynamically. This allows you to compare connectivity patterns and explore accessibility metrics in high resolution.
For mobility researchers and transport consultants, UrbanEcho is especially useful. The platform integrates activity-based simulation outputs, which allow users to examine travel demand, temporal variation and behavioural patterns, among other metrics, all without needing to set up or run the simulations themselves. The results can also be combined with a company’s own geospatial data to produce analysis tailored to their specific needs.
Navigating the challenges of “high tech” solutions
However, the path from digital simulations to physical realities is not without its hurdles. Since developing applications is energy-intensive, particularly in the training and development phases, this power consumption must always be weighed against the actual efficiency savings achieved during use. Currently, there is no available data on the carbon footprint or the potential net savings of the UrbanEcho project. While environmental benefits likely vary by city, this data remains essential to quantifying the platform’s true impact.
Beyond the digital realm, the ultimate success of UrbanEcho depends on to what extent the data can be translated into action. A digital twin can identify a traffic bottleneck with surgical precision, but it cannot navigate the underlying political or financial obstacles that stall infrastructure projects. There is a risk that planners may spend excessive resources perfecting a digital model while the physical streets remain stagnant due to funding gaps or bureaucratic gridlock. #
For this technology to be genuinely transformative, it must serve as a catalyst for physical change; tangible, and often extremely ‘low tech’ solutions like dedicated bus lanes, safer corridors and better roads.
