An introduction

1

• Using Mobile Phone Meta Data For National
  Statistics

• An introduction
• May Offermans, Martijn Tennekes, Alex Priem,
  Shirley Ortega en Nico Heerschap

2
Content

• 1 Data Sources
• Event Data Records(EDR)
• Customer databases
• 2 Privacy and processing
• 3Results
• Applications in statistics
• Daytime population
• Tourism
• 4 Conclusions

3
Source Call Detail Records/ Event Data Detail
Records

• Call Detail records can contain many variables
  like
• the phone number of the subscriber originating
  the call (calling party)
• the phone number receiving the call (called
  party)
• the starting time of the call (date and time)
• the call duration
• the billing phone number that is charged for the
  call
• the identification of the telephone exchange or
  equipment writing the record
• a unique sequence number identifying the record
• the disposition or the results of the call,
  indicating, for example, whether or not the call
  was connected
• call type (voice, SMS, etc.)
• Each exchange manufacturer decides which
  information is emitted on the tickets and how it
  is formatted. Examples
• Timestamp

4
Source Mobile Phone MetadataCall Detail
Records/ Event Data Detail Records

• Monthly 4 Billion Event Data/Detail Records of
• 6-7 million users contains information of
• Antenna location
• Time indicator
• In- or outgoing
• Technology information (data, sms, call
  ..dual/umts)
• Roaming (foreign devices)
• Customer database (unique number of foreign
  callers per months)

5
Applications under research

• Daytime population
• Mobility, of which tourism
• Safety
• Demographics
• Border traffic
• Economical activity
• Disaster management or safety planning
• Use of public services
• Sociology (calling patterns)
• Health

6
Population
Source Vodafone/SN
7
Privacy Process (1)

• Problems big data
• Dynamical data source that keeps on growing
• Daily change of antenna locations (4G)
• Software
• Transporting data
• Security issues
• Privacy
• Costs -gtgtgtgt

8
Privacy Process (2)
Validated output for mobility reporting

• Anonymized aggregated data
• Micro data from the mobile network will be
  transferred to a new server system.
• During this process most sensitive variables
  become hashed or deleted.
• Only Mezuro has access to the process to collect
  aggregated anonymized data

Mezuro
Aggregation validation (Anonymisation phase 2)
Automated blind analysis
Solution, controlled by Vodafone
Replace User-IDs (Anonymisation phase 1)
Traffic data (Events CDRs)
Vodafone
9
Privacy Process (3)

• Advantages
• Save, quick, fast, cheap, limits the risks and no
  personal data
• Disadvantages
• Does not fit current methodological practice
• No personal data, so cannot be coupled to other
  personal data.
• Persons are not followed directly
• No direct weighing

10
Research

• New statistics- gt Daytime population
• Tourism statistics -gt Inbound tourism

11
Results (1) - Daytime Population
Source Vodafone/Mezuro, compiled by SN
12
Results (2) - Day time population
Municipal Personal Records Database
Almere commuter town?
Source Vodafone/Mezuro, compiled by SN
13
Tourism
Inbound tourism Roaming data
14
Results (1) Tourism

• German tourists ( devices)

Source Vodafone/Mezuro, compiled by SN
15
Tourism (2) German tourists at the coast
Devices
Rainfall
Source Vodafone/Mezuro, compiled by SN
16
Tourism (3) Portugese roaming
Portugese roaming data during 2013 UEFA Cup
League final, Benfica (Portugal) - Chelsea
(England)
Source Vodafone/Mezuro, compiled by SN
17
Tourism (4)
Source Vodafone/Mezuro, compiled by SN
18
Tourism (5) Different type of communication
Source Vodafone/Mezuro, compiled by SN
19
Conclusions for tourism

• Potential
• Replace existing statistics and new statistics
• Smaller area and smaller timeframes
• Events
• Also when 24 hour limit is dropped
• Daytrips and number overnight stays
• Flows of tourists
• Tourist related areas
• Rather trends then volumes (benchmarking)
• Privacy issues, but also access (telecom
  providers)
• New methodological issues/new framework
  (representativeness)
• Role of national statistical offices?
• Revolutionary or evolutionary?