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Billions of dollars are spent every year to provide life-saving assistance to people devastated by wars and natural disasters. High-quality data is essential in order to design, monitor and evaluate effective policies in these situations.

The coverage of mobile technology has been expanding, and by 2017, 65,9% of the global population were using mobile phones. The meta-data generated by mobile phones is currently being used to assist in the global fight against disasters, epidemics and climate change.

I spoke to Amit Sanyal, Executive Head for Consumer Value Solutions at Mahindra Comviva, to find out more about how mobile operators can help in such situations. Mahindra Comviva provides mobility solutions, and Sanyal has decade of experience in the telecom space.

Sanyal explained how call detail records (CDRs) contain location information that can be used to trace a subscriber’s movements with a reasonable degree of accuracy. An aggregate of individual CDRs yields patterns, trends, and spatial distribution of a large population. Combining CDR analysis with secondary data gives valuable insights on human mobility in the aftermath of epidemics, disasters, and climate change.

Assisting in epidemics

Sanyal mentions how mobile operators assisted during the widespread outbreak of Ebola in Liberia. More than 11,000 people died in this epidemic. When an epidemic occurs on such a massive scale, the authorities need information on the number of people affected in a region, as well as the outbreak pattern of the epidemic in neighboring regions. This helps them to react quickly and contain the epidemic.

In the outbreak in Liberia, the aggregated CDR data generated timely information on mobility patterns within the country, as well into neighboring countries, such as the Republic of Guinea and Sierra Leone. In the project, which ran for two months, Liberia’s main operators, Lonestar, Cellcom, and Novafone collected CDR data to reconstruct mobility patterns following the epidemic.

The project involved Liberia’s entire base of mobile subscribers. Phone numbers were replaced with a hash algorithm that generated random numbers to protect a subscriber’s privacy. CDR analysis of subscriber data provided details of migration from a specific town. It showed the volume of people entering a hazard zone, and their movements thereafter. The analysis also provided details of inbound and outbound migration with the neighboring countries.

Similarly, when Dengue broke out again Pakistan in 2013, the call data of 40 million Telenor Pakistan subscribers was used to understand its geographical spread and timing.