2 November 2026
Ahead of the THE Awards on 26 November, our Partners have been speaking with those shortlisted for the AQ-sponsored awards, hearing the stories behind their submissions and learning more about the people, ideas and achievements making a real difference across higher education. It’s been a great opportunity to hear directly about their work and share the impact they’re having across the sector.
In this interview, Kiersten Avery spoke to Dr Elisabetta Pietrostefani and Professor Francisco Rowe, from the Geographic Data Science Lab at the University of Liverpool, about their shortlisted submission for International Collaboration of the Year.
When conflict or disaster forces people to leave their homes, one of the biggest challenges for humanitarian organisations is understanding where those people have gone and doing so quickly enough to get help to where it is needed.
Working in partnership with the United Nations International Organisation for Migration (IOM), they have been exploring how information generated through mobile phones and other digital activity can help humanitarian agencies better understand population displacement.
It is an interesting example of academic research being applied to a very immediate human challenge. But what particularly struck me was that the science itself is only part of the story. Just as important has been building trust in the information, understanding its limitations and ensuring that it can be used responsibly.
The collaboration began with work relating to the war in Ukraine and has since developed into a wider partnership, exploring how these approaches might support humanitarian responses to future crises.
Where did the collaboration with the IOM begin, and what made you realise your research could make a difference?
Elisabetta: Francisco and I had both been working with different parts of the IOM independently. We work together in Liverpool’s Geographic Data Science Lab, and through those conversations we started to explore how we might bring our expertise together.
We initially secured a small amount of funding, followed by a larger project, which allowed us to develop a much more structured relationship with IOM colleagues.
The particular project behind this nomination focused on Ukraine, using mobile phone GPS information and other forms of digital trace data to estimate population displacement and compare those findings with the IOM’s existing data.
That gave us an opportunity to work together much more closely, meeting regularly, sharing information and developing the approach as we went along.
Francisco: When the war began in Ukraine, humanitarian organisations knew that people were being displaced and crossing international borders, but there were significant gaps in their understanding of where people were actually going.
Were they remaining in towns and cities close to the border, or moving further away? Within Ukraine, where were people leaving, and where were they relocating?
These are important questions when you’re trying to work out where humanitarian assistance is needed, how many people might require support and what resources should be available.
The challenge was that collecting that information through traditional methods was extremely difficult, particularly in areas affected by conflict.
We realised that one of the things we specialise in at Liverpool is using digitally generated information to understand how populations move. Elisabetta had access to relevant mobile phone location data, and we began exploring whether we could use that expertise to help fill some of the gaps.
It was a situation where we could see a very practical application for our research.
For those of us who aren’t data scientists, how does digital trace data actually help you understand what’s happening during a crisis?
Elisabetta: Digital trace data is essentially information generated through the way people use mobile applications, the internet and other digital services, where that information has a geographical element.
We don’t simply take that information and assume it represents the population. We combine it with other population data and use different methods to develop estimates of where people are and how that changes over time.
The real advantage is the frequency with which the information becomes available.
The IOM does an enormous amount of work collecting information about population movement, often through surveys or speaking to people on the ground. But that takes time and resources. Even in very good circumstances, those exercises might happen monthly or every few months.
With digital data, we can sometimes produce estimates much more frequently, potentially even daily.
That’s particularly useful in the early stages of a conflict or natural disaster, when humanitarian organisations haven’t yet had the opportunity to collect detailed information.
It doesn’t replace traditional data collection, and the estimates need to be checked and understood alongside other evidence. But it can provide an earlier indication of what might be happening, at a point when that information could be particularly valuable.
One of the things that struck me was the ethical dimension. You’re dealing with information about very vulnerable populations, often in conflict situations. How do you balance the potential benefits with the responsibility to protect those people?
Francisco: That’s a really important part of the work.
Like many technologies, the impact depends on how the information is used. Data that could help humanitarian organisations understand where people need assistance could potentially be used for very different purposes.
We therefore have to think carefully about how we access, process and communicate the information.
Some of the original data can contain very precise geographical information, potentially identifying where an individual was at a particular point in time.
We work in secure environments and aggregate the information into broader geographical areas so that we’re not producing estimates that identify individual people or households.
We also have to think about who has access to the findings and how those findings are shared.
Initially, we were working within a relatively closed group, and we’ve been careful about how information is communicated beyond that. We also tend to focus on historical or retrospective analysis rather than sharing live population movements.
There is always a balance between producing information that is useful and ensuring that it doesn’t create additional risks for the people we’re trying to help.
The safeguards are a fundamental part of how we approach the research.
Partnerships between universities and international organisations can look quite straightforward on paper, but I imagine the reality is rather more complicated. What have been the biggest challenges in making this work?
Francisco: There are probably two main challenges.
The first is access to the data itself. It can be expensive, technically difficult to manage and challenging to adapt for a purpose that it wasn’t originally designed for. You need considerable specialist expertise to work with it properly.
But the second challenge is perhaps even more important, and that’s trust.
For an organisation like the IOM, it’s not enough for us to produce an estimate and say that it’s accurate. They need to understand how reliable it is, what its limitations are and whether they can have sufficient confidence in it to inform humanitarian operations.
A lot of our work has therefore focused on understanding what an organisation needs to know before it can trust and use this kind of information.
Elisabetta: We’ve spent a great deal of time having those conversations with IOM colleagues and other UN agencies.
It’s about understanding the circumstances in which they would use the information, what caveats need to be highlighted and even the format in which they need the findings presented.
Those things might sound relatively straightforward, but they’re not.
We’ve also spent considerable time comparing our estimates with the IOM’s existing data, understanding where there are differences and what those differences might tell us.
It’s been a learning process for both sides, and there’s still more work to do.
For us as researchers, it’s about understanding how to produce information that is not only scientifically robust, but genuinely useful to the organisations making decisions.
What I found particularly interesting was that you’ve described quite a journey, from demonstrating what might be possible to building confidence in the approach. Has that changed how you work together?
Elisabetta: Yes, I think we’ve learned an enormous amount about what it actually means to process this kind of data in a way that is useful to a humanitarian organisation, particularly when they need information quickly.
We’ve already been able to apply some of that learning beyond the original Ukraine project.
For example, during the escalation of conflict involving Iran, Francisco led work using a different form of digital trace data. As a team, we were able to develop an approach and produce a report in a format that would be useful to UN agencies and the IOM.
We did that within a matter of weeks of the conflict escalating, which is a very short timescale in academic terms.
I think the IOM is also becoming more open to using these kinds of estimates, particularly during the first few weeks or months of a crisis when other information may be limited.
Francisco: One of the interesting things about the Iran work was that the IOM actually approached us to ask whether we were doing anything relevant.
That suggests a growing confidence in the approach and a recognition that this type of information could have value.
But there’s still an important question about how we move from individual case studies to something that can be used more routinely.
At the moment, we don’t have the infrastructure where a humanitarian organisation can simply access a system and produce reliable population estimates whenever a disaster or conflict occurs.
We need to develop that capability, bringing together the data, the analytical methods and a clear way of communicating the results.
That’s something we’ve been working on with the IOM and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
We’re also continuing to explore how we assess the quality of the information. For example, if we’re using data generated by people using a particular mobile application, how representative is that of the wider population?
And what level of confidence would we need before that information could reasonably be used to inform a decision?
Those are important questions if we want these approaches to become more widely used.
You’ve clearly demonstrated what might be possible. What would it take to make this a more established part of humanitarian response?
Elisabetta: I think the biggest challenge is capacity.
We’ve shown that we can bring together the expertise and produce useful information within a relatively short period, but doing that consistently is much more difficult.
As academics, we have other responsibilities, and responding to a crisis within days or weeks isn’t something that’s always possible alongside everything else.
To make this work on a regular basis, you really need dedicated people and resources who can respond when something happens.
I think there would be considerable interest from humanitarian organisations if that capability existed.
We’ve also seen significant reductions in staffing and data capabilities across UN agencies, which makes this kind of collaboration increasingly important.
Those organisations still need good information, but they may have fewer resources available to collect and analyse it themselves.
There is a real opportunity for universities to contribute their expertise, but we need the funding and capacity to make that sustainable.
Francisco: I agree. Part of the next stage is developing more robust infrastructure so that we’re not starting from scratch every time.
We also need to continue building confidence in the data and understanding the circumstances in which it can be used.
The ambition is to move beyond demonstrating the methodology through individual crises and towards something that humanitarian organisations can draw on more consistently.
It’s quite unusual in academic research to have the opportunity to see such an immediate connection between your work and a real-world challenge. What has this collaboration meant to you personally?
Elisabetta: For me, it’s really what makes the work worthwhile.
I would do it many times over.
I think that’s why Francisco, myself and others in the lab are so keen to develop more capacity to continue this work.
We know that the expertise can be useful, and we’ve learned a great deal about how to make it relevant to humanitarian organisations.
The frustration is that we can’t necessarily respond every time there’s a crisis, because we don’t always have the time or resources available.
We’re very motivated to continue developing the work over the longer term, but ultimately that will depend on whether we can secure the funding to support it.
The need is certainly there, and I think the collaboration has shown what can be achieved when we bring the right expertise together.
We’re looking forward to celebrating the achievements and successes of higher education institutions across all the awards next month, and recognising the fantastic work taking place across the sector. To see the full shortlist of the THE Awards, visit their website at https://the-awards.co.uk/2026/en/page/shortlist.
