MobileActive.org

Monitoring Populations by their SIM Cards: Flowminder Predicts Where People Go In Crises

After a disaster or humanitarian crisis, people often leave affected areas and resettle elsewhere. These population shifts can strain infrastructure and make it difficult to coordinate relief efforts when no one knows exactly where displaced individuals have gone. After the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, more than one million Haitians were left homeless; in the ensuing months the country was hit by a cholera outbreak that has now killed roughly 7000 people. Two years after the earthquake, there are still nearly 500,000 people living in displacement camps across the country.

Haiti’s population movements, combined with the cholera outbreaks, highlight the importance of identifying areas where infrastructure is strained after disasters. In response, a recent research paper "Improved Response to Disasters and Outbreaks by Tracking Population Movements with Mobile Phone Network Data: A Post-Earthquake Geospatial Study in Haiti" examines how SIM card data can be used to draw conclusions about post-disaster population movements.