Population movements around the March 2020 containment using mobile phone network operators data

INSEE has had access to mobile telephony data as part of the monitoring of the 2020 health crisis. These data were used to produce the following statistics on population movements between the French regions before and after containment. In addition to a publication for the general public, this project has led to the distribution of a visualisation flows and to publish the dataset to the experimental statistics.

datavisualisation

machine learning

Insee

experiment

open-data

mobile phone data

Published

1 November 2020

Project summary

	Population movements around the March 2020 containment using mobile phone data
Project details	As part of its statistical analysis and production work, INSEE used new private data from mobile phone operators to estimate internal population movements in France during the first containment period in March 2020. The experimental data were published in 2021. Taking advantage of the few days between the announcement of the containment and its entry into force, the population was able to choose where to spend this period. Based on private mobile phone data, which INSEE was already working on, INSEE estimated that around 1.5 million metropolitan residents had returned to their home département and that Paris had lost around 450,000 metropolitan residents compared with the first few months of 2020, half of whom were usual Paris residents. These population surpluses were widely distributed throughout France. In general (apart from Paris), the population was closer to its usual place of residence during the confinement: the reasons for overnight stays in other regions, such as tourism, family visits or business trips, were severely restricted. A year later, a richer dataset was published by INSEE using the same method to visualise overnight stays aggregated by place of residence, comparing the period before and after the confinement. A datavisualisation was also shared.
Players	Insee
Project products and documentation	- Population present in the area before and after the start of containment - Initial results, April 2020 (French) - Population present in the area before and after the start of containment: consolidated results, May 2020 (French) - Partial return of population movements at the end of the lockdown period, Insee Analyses n°54, July 2020 - Social mix is stronger during daytime in places of activity than at night in residential neighborhoods, Insee Analyses n°59, November 2020 - Population movements during containment in spring 2020, published experimental data, April 2021 (French) - Datavisualisation published on population movements
Project code	- The code is available on GitHub InseeFrLab/lockdown-maps-R