Analyzing the Behavior and Financial Status of Soccer Fans from a Mobile Phone Network Perspective: Euro 2016, a Case Study

In this study, Call Detail Records (CDRs) covering Budapest for the month of June in 2016 were analyzed. During this observation period, the 2016 UEFA European Football Championship took place, which significantly affected the habit of the residents despite the fact that not a single match was played in the city. We evaluated the fans’ behavior in Budapest during and after the Hungarian matches and found that the mobile phone network activity reflected the football fans’ behavior, demonstrating the potential of the use of mobile phone network data in a social sensing system. The Call Detail Records were enriched with mobile phone properties and used to analyze the subscribers’ devices. Applying the device information (Type Allocation Code) obtained from the activity records, the Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM), which do not operate in cell phones, were omitted from mobility analyses, allowing us to focus on the behavior of people. Mobile phone price was proposed and evaluated as a socioeconomic indicator and the correlation between the phone price and the mobility customs was found. We also found that, besides the cell phone price, the subscriber age and subscription type also had effects on users’ mobility. On the other hand, these factors did not seem to affect their interest in football.

Avoiding Risk of Disputes by Re-Engineering Telecommunication Services With Blockchain Technologies

Blockchain is a technology used to immutably and transparently store information that has gained wide popularity due to the use with cryptocurrency, but it is suitable for many other business scenarios. In this paper, the authors deal with carriers providing voice services by exchanging calls with each other. These companies need to transparently store call detail records (CDR) in order to avoid billing discrepancies which can lead to disputes and risk of interruption of services with heavy consequences from the legal point of view. In this paper, the authors present a solution to this problem by using hyperledger fabric to develop smart contracts, which are invoked to store information about each CDR generated. The proposed solution initially stores CDRs before inputting these to the blockchain network. The paper presents experiments with thorough testing on the blockchain network and also some performance improvements. Results show the effectiveness of avoiding disputes by guaranteeing that CDRs are exchanged effectively and immutably without room for ambiguities or misinterpretation.

Adattudományi innováció az egészségügy környezeti kihívásainak kezelésében: a nagy adatállományok hasznosításának jelentősége és lehetőségei a járványkezelésben

Összefoglaló. A COVID-19 járvány rámutatott arra, hogy az egészségügy kiemelt nemzetbiztonsági terület. Az egészségbiztonsági kockázati tényezőkkel szemben ellenálló egészségügyi rendszerek adattudományi innováció nélkül nem képzelhetők el. A közlemény két esettanulmányon keresztül mutatja be, hogy a nagy, működés során generálódó adatbázisok elemzése hogyan segítheti a járványokkal szembeni védekezést. A mobilcella információk elemzése a leghatékonyabb eszköz a tömeges népességmozgások nyomon követésére, így a vesztegzár intézkedések hatásának döntéstámogatási célú vizsgálatára, az oltásellenes közösségimédia-aktivitás hálózatelemzése pedig segíti az immunizációs kampányok tervezését és megvalósítását. Tanulmányunkban amellett érvelünk, hogy az egészségügy információ- és kommunikációtechnológia fejlődésére építő digitalizációja a kulcsa egy környezeti változásokkal megbirkózni képes egészségügy kialakításának. Summary. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that health and health care should be considered a top priority area of national security. Health security risks can only be addressed with resilient health systems, which are not possible to be established without innovation in health data science. This publication introduces two examples to illustrate this point, both in the field of the management of epidemics. The first case provides a summary of our previous publication about how mobile phone Call Detail Records can be used to trace population movement to evaluate the effectiveness of movement restriction measures, such as the lock down, which was implemented in Hungary during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis shows that the collation and processing of Call Detail Records is an effective and inexpensive method to monitor mass population movement, and complements well the GPS-based smartphone method, which is more suitable for contact tracing and controlling of home quarantine of individuals. Our CDR-based method could be used by other countries, as well as to monitor movement between countries at the European level or internationally, with minimal adaptation effort. The second case introduces a study to gain insight into and better understanding of the potential impact of antivaccination social media activism on the Human Papilloma Virus vaccination campaign in Hungary in 2014. The network analysis of Facebook antivaccination posts and comments showed that during this period, the activists in this network were unable to reach a wider population and were not able to disturb the implementation of the expansion of the well functioning Hungarian public vaccination programme. Unfortunately, this is not the case regarding the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in progress, which suggests that the antivaccination activism is a real and serious security threat to be dealt with. In conclusion, we argue in this paper that the digital transformation of health care, based on the explosive development of information and communication technologies, is of key importance to the establishment of resilient health systems, which are able to cope efficiently with the challenges posed by the rapid environmental changes generated by societal transformation of the 21st century.

Caracterização da relação entre redes sociais e mobilidade de indivíduos em contextos urbanos

A compreensão da organização urbana é fundamental para um melhor planejamento e definição de políticas públicas que visem maior bem estar da população e mitigação de problemas sociais. Modelos computacionais capazes de integrar dados de diferentes fontes podem auxiliar a caracterização da complexa organização geográfica e socioeconômica da população em áreas urbanas com grande resolução e aplicabilidade em contextos práticos. Este trabalho apresenta a análise da complexidade urbana representada pelas relações sociais e de mobilidade através da investigação de registros de ligações telefônicas armazenadas como Call Detail Records (CDR). Considerando duas cidades com características distintas, experimentos realizados a partir da caracterização da mobilidade individual das pessoas permitem observar uma forte interedependência entre seu comportamento de mobilidade no espaço urbano e o comportamento exibido pelas pessoas que definem sua rede social.

Access to electricity and digital inclusion: evidence from mobile call detail records

Despite significant progress in mobile connectivity, a large number of individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa are at risk of being left behind, especially those living in rural areas and women. In this paper, we use an original data set of mobile call detail records from Senegal and exploit variations across plausibly similar rural municipalities to assess the impact of access to electricity on mobile connectivity. We find that access to mobile connectivity for rural users, measured by mobile telephony subscriptions or smartphone ownership, increases with access to electricity, with a stronger impact for women. The impact on usage is also positive, but stems from the increased volume of incoming communications: rural mobile users with access to electricity do not place more calls than those with limited access; rather, they receive more calls and text messages from urban areas, especially those with higher living standards. These findings suggest that access to electricity can be a significant driver of digital inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Quantifying the differences in call detail records

The increasing availability of mobile phone data has attracted the attention of several researchers interested in studying our collective behaviour. Our interactions with the phone network can take several forms, from SMS messages to phone calls and data usage. Typically, mobile phone data are released to researchers in the form of call detail records , which contain records of different types of interactions, and can be used to analyse various aspects of our behaviour. However, the inherently behavioural nature of these interactions may result in differences between how we make phone calls and receive text messages. Studies which rely on data derived from these interactions, therefore, need to carefully consider these differences. Here, we aim to investigate differences and limitations of different types of mobile phone interactions data by analysing a large mobile phone dataset. We study the relationship between different types of interactions and show how it changes over time. We anticipate our findings to be of interest to all researchers working in the area of computational social science.

Using big data for impact evaluations

The amount of big data available has exploded with recent innovations in satellites, sensors, mobile devices, call detail records, social media applications, and digital business records. Big data offers great potential for examining whether programmes and policies work, particularly in contexts where traditional methods of data collection are challenging. During pandemics, conflicts, and humanitarian emergency situations, data collection can be challenging or even impossible. This CEDIL Methods Brief takes a step-by-step, practical approach to guide researchers designing impact evaluations based on big data. This brief is based on the CEDIL Methods Working Paper on ‘Using big data for evaluating development outcomes: a systematic map’.

Analysis of call detail records to inform the COVID-19 response in Ghana—opportunities and challenges

Telecommunications data are being explored by many countries as a new source of data that can be incorporated into their national statistical systems. In particular, “mobile positioning data” are increasingly being used to study population movements and population distributions. However, the legal, ethical, and technical complexities of working with this type of data often pose many barriers, which can prevent the data from being used at the times when it is most urgently needed. We demonstrate how having a robust public–private partnership framework, a privacy-preserving technical setup, and a communications strategy already in place, prior to an emergency, can enable governments to harness the advantages of telecommunications data at the times when it is most valuable. However, even once these foundations are in place, the challenges of competing priorities, managing expectations, and maintaining communication with data consumers during a pandemic mean that the potential of the data is not automatically translated into direct impact. This highlights the importance of sensitisation exercises, targeted at potential data users, to make clear the potential and limitations of the data, as well as the importance of being able to maintain direct communication with data users. The views expressed in this work belong solely to the authors and should not be interpreted as the views of their institutions.