ArticlePalgrave communications2019
Exploring the use of mobile phone data for national migration statistics.
Article in Palgrave communications, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A Systematic Review of Mobile Phone Data in Crime Applications: A Coherent Taxonomy Based on Data Types and Analysis Perspectives, Challenges, and Future Research Directions.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Pooled it
- Refined mapping of ethnic minority population under the fusion of nighttime light data and multisource data.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A highly granular temporary migration dataset derived from mobile phone data in Senegal.Scientific data · 2025Article
- A scoping review of the methods used to estimate health facility catchment populations for child health indicators in sub-Saharan Africa.Population health metrics · 2025Article
- Mapping seasonal human mobility across Africa using mobile phone location history and geospatial data.Research square · 2025Article
- Bias in mobility datasets drives divergence in modeled outbreak dynamics.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- High-resolution spatio-temporal risk mapping for malaria in Namibia: a comprehensive analysis.Malaria journal · 2024Article
- Article
- Review of Major Social Determinants of Health in Schizophrenia-Spectrum Disorders: II. Assessments.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2023Article
- Disparities in mobile phone ownership reflect inequities in access to healthcare.PLOS digital health · 2023Article
- Using call detail records to determine mobility patterns of different socio-demographic groups in the western area of Sierra Leone during early COVID-19 crisis.Environment and planning. B, urban analytics and city science · 2023Article
- Exploring spatial feedbacks between adaptation policies and internal migration patterns due to sea-level rise.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Application of Gaussian Mixtures in a Multimodal Kalman Filter to Estimate the State of a Nonlinearly Moving System Using Sparse Inaccurate Measurements in a Cellular Radio Network.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Article
- Exploring Environmental Health Inequalities: A Scientometric Analysis of Global Research Trends (1970-2020).International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Global holiday datasets for understanding seasonal human mobility and population dynamics.Scientific data · 2022Article
- How accurate are WorldPop-Global-Unconstrained gridded population data at the cell-level?: A simulation analysis in urban Namibia.PloS one · 2022Article
- Using mobile money data and call detail records to explore the risks of urban migration in Tanzania.EPJ data science · 2022Article
- Understanding peace through the world news.EPJ data science · 2022Article
- Using big data for evaluating development outcomes: A systematic map.Campbell systematic reviews · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Statistics on internal migration are important for keeping estimates of subnational population numbers up-to-date as well as urban planning, infrastructure development and impact assessment, among other applications. However, migration flow statistics typically remain constrained by the logistics of infrequent censuses or surveys. The penetration rate of mobile phones is now high across the globe with rapid recent increases in ownership in low-income countries. Analysing the changing spatiotemporal distribution of mobile phone users through anonymized call detail records (CDRs) offers the possibility to measure migration at multiple temporal and spatial scales. Based on a dataset of 72 billion anonymized CDRs in Namibia from October 2010 to April 2014, we explore how internal migration estimates can be derived and modelled from CDRs at subnational and annual scales, and how precision and accuracy of these estimates compare to census-derived migration statistics. We also demonstrate the use of CDRs to assess how migration patterns change over time, with a finer temporal resolution compared to censuses. Moreover, we show how gravity-type spatial interaction models built using CDRs can accurately capture migration flows. Results highlight that estimates of migration flows made using mobile phone data is a promising avenue for complementing more traditional national migration statistics and obtaining more timely and local data.
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.