In the SDG sphere, the first condition for impactful measuring is to have detailed information about a country’s population through census, which remains a challenge in many contexts, usually being time-consuming and expensive. A census can only be conducted once every few years at best and some countries, especially those experiencing conflict or political instability, have not  been able to conduct a census in decades. Moreover, a census will yield a solid estimate of population size, structure, and distribution at one point in time, but will not provide a reliable picture of changes happening in real time.

Having an estimate of human mobility patterns and trends that reflect the temporal and geographical dimensions is an invaluable step to provide new insights for effective public policies. In this context, using Big Data, and in particular Call Detail Records (CDR), can be an effective methodology to shed new light on demographic features that have a wide range of implications for development policies and programmes.

Data-Pop is contributing to the implementation of innovative approaches towards this end.