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Anonymized data – information from which the identity of the sender has been stripped – from mobile telephone usage could provide vital support in efforts to achieve sustainable development and to respond to humanitarian crises, according to insights derived from a study by the United Nations.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) and UN Global Pulse – an innovation initiative of the Secretary-General – have teamed up on research projects exploring the link between mobile phone usage and hunger and they are presenting their findings at the Netmob Conference for Scientific Analysis of Mobile Phone Data at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, United States.
“This is a new frontier for humanitarian assistance,” said Arif Husain, WFP Chief Economist. “As agencies begin adopting these new techniques, information collection will become cheaper and faster, making relief programmes much more responsive to the needs of hungry poor worldwide.”
The joint projects focused on ways anonymous mobile phone data could be analysed to understand household hunger and vulnerability patterns, and doing so in real-time helps humanitarian agencies pinpoint areas of acute need with a level of speed and precision that have never been achieved before.
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Source & Copyright: UN News Centre