Identifying seasonal mobility profiles from anonymized and aggregated mobile phone data. Application in food security

PLoS One. 2018 Apr 26;13(4):e0195714. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0195714. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

We propose a framework for the systematic analysis of mobile phone data to identify relevant mobility profiles in a population. The proposed framework allows finding distinct human mobility profiles based on the digital trace of mobile phone users characterized by a Matrix of Individual Trajectories (IT-Matrix). This matrix gathers a consistent and regularized description of individual trajectories that enables multi-scale representations along time and space, which can be used to extract aggregated indicators such as a dynamic multi-scale population count. Unsupervised clustering of individual trajectories generates mobility profiles (clusters of similar individual trajectories) which characterize relevant group behaviors preserving optimal aggregation levels for detailed and privacy-secured mobility characterization. The application of the proposed framework is illustrated by analyzing fully anonymized data on human mobility from mobile phones in Senegal at the arrondissement level over a calendar year. The analysis of monthly mobility patterns at the livelihood zone resolution resulted in the discovery and characterization of seasonal mobility profiles related with economic activities, agricultural calendars and rainfalls. The use of these mobility profiles could support the timely identification of mobility changes in vulnerable populations in response to external shocks (such as natural disasters, civil conflicts or sudden increases of food prices) to monitor food security.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Cell Phone / statistics & numerical data*
  • Data Anonymization
  • Data Interpretation, Statistical
  • Emigration and Immigration / statistics & numerical data
  • Employment / statistics & numerical data
  • Feasibility Studies
  • Food Supply* / statistics & numerical data
  • Human Migration / statistics & numerical data*
  • Humans
  • Seasons

Grants and funding

PJZ wants to thank the financial support of the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain (via projects MTM2010-15102, and MTM2015-67396-P) and Cátedra Orange at the ETSI Telecomunicación in the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain. DPE wants to thank financial support of the Biomedical Image Technologies lab BIT-UPM and the Centre of Innovation and Technology for Development itdUPM. The authors also want to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the Grant OPP1114791 received as a prize in the context of the Senegal D4D Challenge. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.