Disentangling Population Mobility during Disasters Using Digital Trace Data: The Case of 2023 Earthquakes in Turkey

Ebru Sanlitürk , Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

This study combines the population and mobility datasets released by the Data for Good initiative of Meta on disaster situations with official register data to explore the potential of their highly granular data in population studies. Focusing on the case of 2023 Earthquakes in Turkey, I aim to first assess the potential of Facebook population data to study disaster-related changes in population size, and second disentangle the different types of mobility streams during disasters. By linking the mobility data with annual data on internal migrations, I aim to reveal patterns and characteristics of different mobility flows in the disaster-time digital trace data, that allow for distinguishing the flows of crisis responders, short-term evacuations, and long-term internal migration flows.

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 Presented in Session P4. Migration, Migrants, and Mobility