Flowminder is a member of the 5-organisation MDEEP project, a partnership focused on the "development of methods for longer-term applications that can fundamentally change the way we understand the effects of climate change on vulnerable human populations." The Mobile Data, Environmental Extremes and Population (MDEEP) project was presented in February 2014 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. MDEEP is a first-time application of mobile call data records (CDR) to understand climate impacts by mapping population flows before and after an extreme weather event.
MDEEP is a partnership between the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), Flowminder, Grameenphone and Telenor Group.
The project started just after cyclone Mahasen hit Bangladesh in May of 2013 and affected over 1.3 million people. As a disaster-prone country with a population of 40 million living at sea level, regularly battered by tropical rainfall and cyclones, it is essential to have a better understanding of climate impacts on the Bangladeshi population. In collaboration with the government of Bangladesh and with anonymous mobile data for over 5 million users provided by Grameenphone, researchers from UNU-EHS and Flowminder analyzed the findings to map population displacement.
Original article: United Nations University