The initiative has been shortlisted for the Awards under 'Mobile in Emergency or Humanitarian Situations' sub-category of Social and Economic Development category, according to a GSMA statement.Under the initiative, Ncell had provided customer macro data to Sweden-based Flowminder, which prepared mobile phone data to better understand population displacement and mobility patterns pre and post-quake for making relief works effective. The initiative was a part of the WorldPop project, which provides open access to global demographic data that can be used to help tackle major challenges, including emergency response situations, according to the statement.
"The movement of mobile users was calculated by Flowminder team by analyzing the movements of de-identified Ncell SIM cards, and combining with WorldPop demographic data," the statement added.
Although there has been use of mobile phone data in the past to measure population movements, this was the first time the method was adopted to track movement in an ongoing 'live' situation, the statement said. This helped to understand where the people are and channelize the rescue, relief efforts accordingly, making the works more efficient, it added.
"Rescue and relief works organizations, development agencies and researchers used the mobile phone data to monitor the movement of people affected by the quake and make use of the data also focusing rebuilding works. This data provide a rapid, easy and ongoing approach for movement estimations and have proven to be accurate, such as in the Haiti earthquake response," said the statement.
The winners will be honored during World Congress, which takes place in Barcelona on February 22-25.
In total, 285 nominees have been shortlisted for more than 40 awards over eight categories, the statement added.
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