Executive Briefing — Heads of Department¶

IsDB Geoinformatics Data Platform (GEIDA) · Operations Complex

9 September 2026 · IsDB HQ Jeddah + Online · approx. 2 hours

The Executive Briefing was delivered to Directors, Managers and Country Operations Managers of the IsDB Operations Complex, together with colleagues from the Regional Hubs and GPP. It sets out what GEIDA is, what it delivers at each stage of the project cycle, and what is required to sustain it inside the Bank.

This page holds the recording, the slide deck and an outline of the session for colleagues who were unable to attend.

Recording¶

Slide deck: GEIDA Executive Briefing — 9 September 2026

Session outline¶

Segment	Content
Opening remarks	Welcome from the Operations Complex leadership · GEIDA as collaboration between Global Practice and Partnerships and Country Programmes
Why location matters	Every project has a location · worked example from a school and cyclone-shelter project
Across the project cycle	Where geospatial evidence enters each phase, from country strategy to post-evaluation
Practice in development finance	How peer institutions use geospatial information
What EO delivers	Worked examples in agriculture, water and infrastructure
From eToolkit to the GEIDA platform	The current tool, and the platform under development
Institutional pathway	Capacity development, the knowledge hub, and building internal capability
Case study	A participant case prepared during Batch 1
Discussion	Questions from the floor and online

Points covered¶

GEIDA at its current stage¶

GEIDA has moved from concept to implementation and is being applied on an initial set of IsDB projects, with anchor projects in Azerbaijan, Mali and Uganda. The approach is to establish a reliable geolocation for a project — a boundary, a corridor, a command area, a catchment or a service area — and connect it to geospatial evidence that can then be used systematically across all phases of the project cycle.

Where geospatial evidence enters the project cycle¶

Stage	Contribution
Country strategy	Spatial diagnostics and baselines on climate and land use
Identification	Site screening, hazard exposure and accessibility checks
Appraisal & design	Standardised project maps and a documented baseline
Implementation	Remote supervision of physical progress between missions
Completion	Comparable before-and-after evidence over the same boundary
Evaluation	Independent verification of spatial change

Each project phase carries its own reporting requirements — PCN, PPRR, PAD and RRM during approval and financing, then PASR and the Project Completion Report, alongside monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment. Geospatial evidence is prepared once against a standardised boundary and reused across these documents.

Worked examples presented¶

A school and cyclone-shelter programme, showing how mapped locations support verification and reporting against the intended results
Irrigation performance before and after investment — crop area, production, crop water use and water productivity measured over time
Land and water management contrasts visible across a shared border, illustrating what layered analysis reveals about a landscape
Portfolio-level mapping, showing how projects and their boundaries can be viewed together across a programme

From the eToolkit to the GEIDA platform¶

The eToolkit was developed with IsDB colleagues to bring Earth Observation data directly into project workflows, and was the platform used by Batch 1 participants to generate baseline reports for their own project sites. Work is underway on the GEIDA platform, which will integrate these capabilities with automated workflows.

Capacity development and institutionalisation¶

The certification programme runs in cohorts: Batch 1 in July 2026, Batch 2 in September 2026 followed by three online sessions, and Batch 3 during the GPP Knowledge Week. The knowledge hub — this site — keeps the training material available for staff joining later or revisiting a topic.

Alongside the training, the briefing addressed the human-resource dimension: sustaining the capability inside the Bank requires internal skills and internal resources rather than continuing reliance on external providers.

Discussion¶

Questions from participants focused on the boundary between what satellite data can evidence and what it cannot. Points raised included the need to verify the accuracy of satellite-derived information against field knowledge; that conditions such as maintenance quality and beneficiary experience require engagement with ministries and communities; and that infrastructure indicators are more challenging to capture remotely than land and water indicators. A participant case study on a transport project, prepared during Batch 1, was presented as an illustration of using EO-derived change as one supporting line of evidence among others.