Detecting dangerous maritime refugee migration paths through cell phone activities

Coban, M., Yumusak, S., Yilmaz, Y. and Altun, H.O. (2023) Detecting dangerous maritime refugee migration paths through cell phone activities. Tsumoto, Shusaku, Ohsawa, Yukio, Chen, Lei, Van den Poel, Dirk, Hu, Xiaohua, Motomura, Yoichi, Takagi, Takuya, Wu, Lingfei, Xie, Ying, Abe, Akihiro and Raghavan, Vijay (eds.) In Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Big Data 2022. IEEE. pp. 6119-6124 . (doi:10.1109/BigData55660.2022.10021131).

Abstract

In the 21st century, the world has experienced devastating wars that have caused people to migrate, creating problems in host countries. Among these migration routes, maritime migration routes are more desirable compared to other routes because coasts cannot be controlled as strictly as the alternative passages. However, maritime migration poses life-threatening risks due to unsafe boats, transportation between undesignated areas, lack of life-saving equipment, and dangerous weather conditions chosen for covert operations. Refugees and migrants may die or go missing at sea during these migrations. Most refugees are unaware of high risks they are facing as they hopelessly set out in search of better living conditions. In this study, we propose that such suicide-like maritime migration activities can be detected to some extent through cell phone activities and there may be a way to track early signs of migrants coming together from other regions and migrating through sea routes. By collecting media reports of failed attempts by immigrants and linking them to the D4R cell phone data, we were able to gain some indications of the possibility of early warning systems through analysis of cell phone calls.

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Contributors

Author: Y. Yilmaz

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