Understanding population displacements on location-based call records using road data

Marcel Salathé, Udayan Kumar
2013
Conference paper

Large population displacements are usually observed after nature disasters. The best approximations to real world population movement in such a short temporal scale are the users' movements patterns derived from the cell phone usage data. However, due to a lot of political, economic and privacy constraints, these sensitive data are not always available. On the other hand, population movements are usually observed on the underlying road network. The correlation between the cell phone users' movement and the road network has yet been examined. The aim of this research is to compare the topological structure and the network metrics of the road network to the cell phone users' movement network in Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire, and to inspect the correlations of movement volume and road connectivity. A flooding scenario was assumed to inspect the responds from both the movement network and road network. Our analysis shows that the cellphone users' movement network and the road network present significant similarities in terms of network partition. Our research also indicates that the road topology could be utilized as a proxy to approximate the population movement volume on above. We present an initial step to help the data-scarce area understand the population movement pattern from more readily-available road network data. Furthermore, our results suggest that traditional evacuation planning should consider the social perspective of population connections and periodical movements

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Related concepts (6)

Social justice

Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive their due from society. In the current movements for social justice, the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets, and economic justice.

Social movement

A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to resist or undo one. It is a type of group action and may involve individuals, organizations, or both. Social movements have been described as "organizational structures and strategies that may empower oppressed populations to mount effective challenges and resist the more powerful and advantaged elites".

Mobile phone

A mobile phone (or cellphone) is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area, as opposed to a fixed-location phone (landline phone). The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture and therefore mobile telephones are called cellphones (or "cell phones") in North America.