Leveraging Emerging Technology, Data and AI for Equitable Public Planning

Accessing essential services and economic opportunities is already difficult for residents of informal settlements, due to long‑standing structural, legal and infrastructural barriers. For people with disabilities (PWDs) living in these contexts challenges are even more complex due to inaccessibility and attitudinal barriers. The physical form of informal urban growth—steep paths, informal bridges, narrow walkways, unplanned roads and paths—creates literal barriers to mobility, independence and equity. Two concrete disability‑focused case studies act as starting points to a broader discussion: how can emerging tech, data, and AI‑enabled tools support more equitable, inclusive public planning—particularly in informal and resource‑constrained contexts—strengthening public participation of PWDs, and without reinforcing existing inequalities? The first case study comes from three informal settlements in Sierra Leone, where Freetown City Council, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), the National Commission for Persons with Disability, and OpenStreetMap Sierra Leone—funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)—demonstrated how open mapping, low-cost drones and smartphones, and spatial analysis using freely accessible software can inform specific, actionable planning decisions, with community members, including PWDs, contributing to data at all levels. Building on this, a Global Disability Innovation Hub case study from Addis Ababa will show how spatial mapping of disability and accessibility data, in collaboration with local organizations of persons with disabilities (OPDs), PWDs and city stakeholders can support development of inclusive city action plans – working with citizens to identify priority actions areas. The discussion will then broaden to consider how such approaches evolve whilst retaining an ethos that centres lived experience of access challenges and how technical capability can be built, at grassroots and institutional levels, to ensure that technology is an enabler of equitable planning; strengthening public decision‑making, rather than replacing local expertise or accountability. The event will close with the launch of the “Engage for Inclusion” report, enabling spaces for exchange on disability mainstreaming / accessibility in the application of digital tech to promote inclusive urban development and governance.