I. Introduction

The National Transport Policy Documents Database is an annotated repository of transport-related policy documents from the 51 economies in the Asia Pacific region covered in the Asian Transport Outlook (ATO). The policy documents include policy documents that provide a perspective on transport as part of national development, that outline general transport policies, or give a specific perspective on the development of roads, railways, the automotive sector, public transport, e-mobility, and others. It also includes policies to limit negative externalities like road safety, air pollution, and climate change. It includes further information on the documents such as the year of publishing, language of the document, and its original source weblink.

The ATO gathers policy documents from publicly accessible sources and is updated on an ongoing basis. If any relevant missing policy information is found, please send an email to asiantransportoutlook@gmail.com

II. Structure of the ATO National Transport Policy Documents Database

A. Document tags

For all the policy documents, tagging categories are specified which can be used for filtering the documents in the interface. It is possible that new tags will be considered in the future and the documents will be retagged accordingly. The tags included are as of September 2022.

• Focus indicates the transport topics covered within the document. The available tags are National (General), Climate, Road Safety, Shipping/ Inland water transport, Energy, Urban, Aviation, National Development Policy, Rail, Road, Multi-Modal, SDG, Public Transport, E-mobility, Automotive, Active Transport, Logistics, Air Pollution, Gender, and Others.
• Document type identifies the type of policy document. The available types are National Development Policy, National Transport Policy, Transport Subsector Policy, National Report to International/ Regional Processes, Transport Laws/ Regulations, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), Long-term Strategies (LTS), Presentation by National Official, Secondary Source, and Other Transport-related Policy.

B. Economy metadata

The ATO economies are also tagged with economy metadata. In addition to the document tags, the economy metadata will also help filter down the desired documents based on the following:

• Subregion is based on ADB Asia-Pacific subregion definition. For Russia and Iran (Islamic Republic of), they are assigned under Others (Central and West Asia, East Asia, Pacific, South Asia, South East Asia, or Others)
• Income Group is based on World Bank income grouping (Low income, Lower middle income, Upper middle income, High income)
• Groups includes various typologies of economies, associations, organizations, and cooperation groupings (Least Developed Countries (LDC), Landlocked Countries (LLC), Small Island Developing States (SIDS), ADB Member, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC), G20, Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), Regionally Environmentally Sustainable Transport (EST) Forum, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC), South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC))

C. ATO National Transport Policy Documents List

An offline version of the policy documents list is available for download in the ATO National Transport Policy Documents Database landing page. The information will include the economy, document title, year published, weblink, transport focus, document type, and language, for each document however in a tabular form. Using the headers, the list can be filtered down as necessary.

III. How to access the ATO National Transport Policy Documents Database

A. Create a search

Within the ATO National Transport Policy Documents Database interface, the space on the left contains panels that filter data by economies, document tags, and time. The space on the right will display the results of the filter. A searchbox is available above this space which is active and useable at any point. Searching by keywords will filter the documents based on the document title, economy name, or document tags. To access the data other than using the searchbox, all parameters (i.e. economy, focus, document type, and time) need to have a selection before any results are shown.

1. Economies panel

Individual economies can be selected by clicking on the checkbox. All economies can be selected by clicking Select All. The selection can be reset by clicking on Reset.

To filter by economy typology, click on the filter button to open the expanded filter window. The filters on the left (i.e. Subregion, Income Group, or other Groups) can be used to narrow down the list of economies.

Notes about filtering:

• Selecting filters within a category will expand the choices (e.g. economies that are either Low income OR Lower-middle income)
• Selecting filters across categories will narrow down the choices (e.g. economies that are both in East Asia AND also High income)

2. Document tags panel

The policy documents are tagged which can be used to narrow down the results. The tagging categories (focus, and document type) are placed in their individual panels. Individual tags can be selected by clicking on the checkbox. All tags for each category can be selected by clicking Select All. The selection can be reset by clicking on Reset.

Notes about filtering:

• Selecting multiple focus areas will expand the results (e.g. documents that cover either Active transport OR E-mobility)
• Selecting focus and document type will narrow down the results (e.g. documents that are both Rail AND also Climate change AND which are Long-Term Strategies)

3. Time panel

The desired data timeframe can be selected per year by clicking on the checkbox or you can use the slider to select a range of years. All available years can be selected by clicking on Select All. The selection can be reset by clicking on Reset.

Shortcuts are available to quickly select recent 5, 10, or 20 years. The time filter also provides a shortcut to select years before 2015 (pre-SDG/Paris Agreement) or 2015 onwards (post-SDG/Paris Agreement).

4. Searchbox

Notes about using the searchbox:

• If filters are currently active, using the searchbox will work in conjunction to narrow down the results (e.g. documents that cover Climate Change and also as a result of searching “energy”)
• If no filters are active, using the searchbox will search with all filters selected by default to all (e.g. documents as a result of searching “energy” regardless of economy, focus, document type, or year)

B. Download selected documents

Within the ATO National Transport Policy Documents Database interface, the space on the right will show the results of documents based on the filters and/or searchbox. Each document will be displayed as a card with additional information such as year published, economy, document title, focus, document type, and language. Language will specify either the document is in English or in another languages.

A Download button is available to download from the ATO repository. The original URL to the policy is also made available below the download button.

If you would like to add a policy document, please send an email to asiantransportoutlook@gmail.com.