News#24 METRAP-Maputo Visit of Universidade Eduardo Mondlane on CDR Applications (October 2025)

The METRAP-Maputo team has developed the SIMPUT-Maputo dashboard to effectively monitor the progress of SIMPUT-Maputo projects. The dashboard needs to be continuously updated with the latest travel demand data. The project utilizes anonymized and aggregated Call Detail Records (CDRs). A dedicated CDR dashboard has been created to visualize people's mobility and overlay with the proposed SIMPUT-Maputo projects. To support the use of CDR data and maintain both dashboards, METRAP-Maputo JICA experts provided several training sessions and seminars to project stakeholders.

As METRAP-Maputo approaches the end of its three-year project, stakeholders are interested in exploring how the acquired skills in CDR analysis can be applied to other fields and academia in Mozambique. On October 7^th, 2025, a meeting was held at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) in Maputo with UEM's Department Chief of Informatics. Representatives from JICA Mozambique Office, JICA Headquarters in Tokyo, the JICA Expert team of METRAP-Maputo, and Professor Ryosuke SHIBASAKI attended the meeting and discussed ways to explore future collaborations with the university in CDR.

Following the meeting, Professor SHIBASAKI delivered a lecture to the UEM students titled 'Sustaining Mobile Data Analysis for Social Good'. He is a professor and Vice President at Reitaku University and the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. He is also a Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo. The lecture explained the use of CDR in various areas, including analyzing disaster behavior, collecting official statistics, space-time analysis, mapping people flow and trip patterns, and socio-benefit applications such as analyzing the spread of Ebola and malaria. He also explained how smartphone applications can be used to conduct surveys for big data collection and how CDR data can be utilized.

By the end of the lecture, the students had gained an overall understanding of CDR applications, its potential uses, and data collection and analysis across various fields. It is hoped that this knowledge will pave the way for new interests and collaboration opportunities.