Methodological guide on the use of mobile phone data: Migration Statistics

The Handbook on the Use of Mobile Phone Data (MPD) for Migration Statistics aims to provide practical guidance on how to collect the statistics on internal and international migration using information from Big Data in compliance with the new United Nations (UN) recommendation on migration Statistics. It reviews the MPD as an alternative (non-traditional) source for generating and/or filling the gap in migration statistics. This Handbook is part of a series of five (5) handbooks developed by the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics (UN-CEBD) Task Team on MPD which are designed to guide countries who plan to use MPD for statistics and indicators in displacement and disaster, information society, dynamic population, migration, and tourism.

The preparation of this handbook was led by the National Statistics Office of Georgia with technical support and guidance from the United Nations Statistics Division and the UN-CEBD Task Team on MPD.

The handbook aims to inform the statistical data users and producers about the opportunities of using Mobile Positioning Data (MPD) to produce migration statistics. This present Handbook represents information on the data sources, MPD quality issues, and other aspects, as well as methods (concepts, definitions, data processing algorithms, and quality assurance), results, and findings.

This Handbook has been prepared by the MPD Task Team Migration Statistics Subgroup led by Geostat team - Shorena Tsiklauri (NSO Geostat) and Mariana Jalagonia (NSO Geostat), with support from Siim Esko (Positium), Michele Vespe (EU-JRC), Karoly Kovacs (UNSD), Ronald Jansen (UNSD), Francesca Grum (UNSD).

The authors express their gratitude to Professor James Raymer and María Isabel Cobos Hernandez (UNSD) for their valuable inputs and recommendations.

Table of Contents

• Box, Tables and Figures
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Background and context
  • 1.1. The Rationale for using alternative data sources for migration statistics
  • 1.2. Traditional versus new data sources
• 2. Basic considerations when using MPD for migrations statistics
  • 2.1. Data quality, privacy and ethical aspects
  • 2.2. Technical, financial and legal aspects
  • 2.3. Limitations and caveats
• 3. Literature Review
  • 3.1. Case study of Estonia and other EU countries
  • 3.2. Case study of Namibia
• 4. Data sources and types
  • 4.1. Data from systems of MNOs
    • 4.1.1. Mobile phone event data – Active positioning data
    • 4.1.2. Mobile phone event data – Passive positioning data
  • 4.2. Data from social media
• 5. Methods
  • 5.1. Basic concepts and definitions
  • 5.2. Data processing algorithms
    • 5.2.1. Estimating change of residence
    • 5.2.2. Estimating internal migration
    • 5.2.3. Estimating international migration
• 6. Quality assurance in using MPD for producing migration statistics
  • 6.1. Assuring quality of input data
  • 6.2. Assuring quality of the statistical process
  • 6.3. Assuring quality of output
• 7. Conclusions
• Glossary
• References