The Asian Transport Observatory (ATO) is supporting efforts to strengthen transport decarbonization and climate resilience planning in Papua New Guinea (PNG), providing data, analysis, and tools that can help inform future policies and investments.

ATO’s work featured in an Asian Development Bank (ADB) consultation mission to Port Moresby in August 2026 under the Pathways for Decarbonization of the Transport Sector initiative. The mission brought together government agencies, development partners, and private-sector stakeholders to discuss opportunities for reducing transport emissions while addressing PNG’s infrastructure and development needs.

A key theme emerging from the discussions was the need for stronger transport data and evidence. Reliable information on transport activity, emissions, infrastructure, and climate risks remains important for developing realistic policies, identifying priorities, and tracking progress.  ATO is helping address this need through its existing work on PNG, including the Transport and Climate Change Profile, transport indicators, emissions estimates, and other knowledge products.

ATO also introduced its emerging work on mapping the exposure of transport infrastructure to climate hazards. In particular, the climate hazard exposure prototype, developed with support from ADB and the European Space Agency, demonstrates how open and geospatial data can be used to identify roads and other transport assets that may be exposed to climate and natural hazards.

This is particularly relevant for PNG, where difficult terrain, dispersed communities, and exposure to natural hazards make transport infrastructure resilience a major development concern. Discussions highlighted the potential for combining broader hazard information with local data on roads, bridges, infrastructure condition, and maintenance to support better planning and investment decisions.