BBC News reports on how big data analytics may help emergency response teams, medical charities and nongovernmental organizations contain the Ebola virus, but to do so, tracking of mobile phones is needed. According to the report, citizens in some of the poorest countries in Africa own mobile phones, which is proving to be a “rich source of data in a region where other reliable sources are sorely lacking.” In one example, Orange Telecom in Senegal shared anonymized voice and text data from 150,000 mobile phones with Swedish nonprofit Flowminder to help draw up maps of population movements in the region. And the U.S. Centers for Disease Control is currently collecting mobile phone activity data from operators to map where helpline calls are sourced.
Full Story