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Call Detail Records to Obtain Estimates of Forcibly Displaced Populations

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Guide to Mobile Data Analytics in Refugee Scenarios

Abstract

Call Detail Records have great potential to drive humanitarian action for early warning, monitoring, decision-making, and evaluation. The Data For Development Challenge leveraged mobile phone data for Development in Senegal. We further explored methodologies and protocols to use this data to support humanitarian action for refugees. Obtaining estimates of forcibly displaced population requires not only data analysis but also a solid protocol to ensure privacy and the right outcomes of the project. When no refugee labeled data is available, a framework to identify displaced population is necessary. We present a methodology to analyze mobility that minimizes privacy risks by subtracting mobility patterns of the population until finding those patterns indicative of the displaced population.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://datacollaboratives.org/cases/orange-telecom-data-for-development-challenge-d4d.html.

  2. 2.

    https://www.unglobalpulse.org/D4D-NetMob.

  3. 3.

    http://datacollaboratives.org/cases/telecom-italias-big-data-challenge.html.

  4. 4.

    HazeGazer http://unglobalpulse.org/blog/hazegazer-crisis-analysis-tool.

  5. 5.

    https://www.unglobalpulse.org/resource-library/guides.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Orange and the Data For Development Challenge organizers, especially Nicolas de Cordes. We also thank UNHCR Innovation and United Nations Global Pulse teams. This work was supported by the UNHCR Innovation fund.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technical University Madrid and LifeD Lab, Madrid, Spain

    David Pastor-Escuredo

  2. UNHCR, Dakar, Senegal

    Asuka Imai

  3. United Nations Global Pulse, New York, NY, USA

    Miguel Luengo-Oroz

  4. UNHCR, Geneva, Switzerland

    Daniel Macguire

Authors
  1. David Pastor-Escuredo
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  2. Asuka Imai
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  3. Miguel Luengo-Oroz
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  4. Daniel Macguire
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Pastor-Escuredo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Albert Ali Salah

  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Alex Pentland

  3. Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy

    Bruno Lepri

  4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Emmanuel Letouzé

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Pastor-Escuredo, D., Imai, A., Luengo-Oroz, M., Macguire, D. (2019). Call Detail Records to Obtain Estimates of Forcibly Displaced Populations. In: Salah, A., Pentland, A., Lepri, B., Letouzé, E. (eds) Guide to Mobile Data Analytics in Refugee Scenarios. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12554-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12554-7_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-12553-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-12554-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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