It is assumed, and postulated by the Future Character of Conflict work by the Defence, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, that many future conflicts will be carried out in congested, cluttered, contested, constrained and connected.
i.e., complex
This means that predicting movement of displaced people will support the targeted application of appropriate resources in a timely manner (did I just actually ay that mouthfull)
With that in mind, this looks interesting.
Using mobile telephone networks to predict movement of displaced peoples.
A research team from the Karolisnka Institute have recently published the results of their work in Haiti with the mobile provider, Digicel.
From the press release…
Using data supplied by a mobile operator, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have shown that population movements after the 2010 Haiti earthquake followed regular patterns. This information can be used to predict beforehand the movements of people after a disaster, and thus improves chances for aid to be delivered to the right places at the right time.
Every year, tens of millions of people are displaced by natural disasters, and to date knowledge of their movement patterns has been sparse. The results of the study, now published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), could therefore help aid organisations to prepare and execute their relief efforts following a major disaster.
After the earthquake in Haiti, over 600,000 people left the capital Port-au-Prince, and over a million people were left homeless. With the help of mobile data provided by Digicel, the largest mobile operator in Haiti, the researchers looked for patterns in the movements of two million anonymous mobile users.
“When disaster strikes we tend to seek comfort in our nearest and dearest,” says Xin Lu, who conducted the study together with colleagues Dr Linus Bengtsson and Dr Petter Holme. “We can see by the mobile data that where people were over Christmas and New Year, which was just before the earthquake, tended to be the place where they returned to afterwards.”
The team also studied the everyday movements of people and found that although people moved greater distances after the earthquake compared to before, their daily movement patterns were extremely regular. Knowing a person’s movements during the first three months after the earthquake, the researchers were able to show that it is possible to predict with 85 per cent probability the location of this person on a particular day in the ensuing period.
The researchers led the work on a paper last August where they, together with colleagues, showed how mobile data could be used to describe population movements after a disaster has happened. This present study takes the work a step further by showing the potential to predict population movements beforehand. Since the disaster, Linus Bengtsson and Xin Lu, both doctoral students at Karolinska Institutet’s Division of Global Health, have initiated Flowminder.org, a non-profit organisation with the aim of disseminating analyses of population movements for free to relief agencies after disasters.
Read more at http://www.flowminder.org/
As the dividing lines between military and civilian response blurs, this kind of research and resultant data/services might become increasingly useful.
Thought it was interesting.
@ TD – Very interesting post TD. I’ve also seen articles about the need to set up mobile phone networks after disasters to allow the dissemination of vital information such as food distribution points, field hospitals, general updates to avoid fear and panic etc. Mobile phone systems may also be more useful in urban combat than the traditional military radios.
A new mission/piece of kit for the Signals?
Very interesting. I know we’ve been aware of the distressingly predictable behaviour of groups of humans for some time but using the mobile phone is an interesting way of actually following the movements.
I wonder how valid the study was though, in that, what about the people who did not have phones and the people whose phones ran out of charge, are they just tracking people who are around a power source?
In any case, it wouldn’t take too much work to iron those kinks out of a study.
What we have to factor in is that in Third World there is a lot more “resilience” in certain systems such as mobile telephony because the users aren’t dependent on Western style energy transportation networks.
Further I would suggest those with mobile phones, though not rich or in government (it is a constant surprise how widespread mobile ‘phone ownership is in the Third World), would be more likely others would follow; heads of households, (small) business men, doctors and nurses, etc. Key nodes in a society.
Always remember that scene in Blackhawk Down of the boy watching the US camp mobile ‘phone in hand.