Leveraging digital data to identify and scale local solutions

In any community, there are those who achieve significantly better outcomes than their peers. Despite having the same resources and limitations, they find more effective solutions to complex challenges. The positive deviance approach seeks to identify these outperformers and understand the strategies behind their success so they can be replicated.

Data powered positive deviance (DPPD) builds on this approach, giving practitioners a method to use digital datasets, such as earth observation and mobility data, to identify positive deviants. Their local solutions can then be uncovered and used to inform community and policy interventions.

In 2020, a network of partners launched the DPPD initiative to test and develop the DPPD method across a number of domains and geographies, from deforestation prevention efforts in Ecuador to COVID-19 containment in Germany. 

We hope to see more development practitioners use the DPPD method and benefit from the increasing availability of digital data.