In the wake of the Nepal disaster, a wide variety of actors - from government, civil society and the private sector alike - rushed in to address the humanitarian crisis. One notable player was Ncell, Nepal’s largest mobile network operator. Shortly after the earthquake, Ncell decided to share its mobile data (in an aggregated, de-identified way) with the the non-profit Swedish organisation, Flowminder.
Flowminder then used this data to map population movements around the country, and these real-time maps allowed the government and humanitarian organisations to better target aid and relief, maximising the impact of their efforts. The initiative has been widely lauded as a model for data collaboration.