Nowcasting Daily Population Displacement in Ukraine through Social Media Advertising Data

Abstract

In times of crisis, real-time data mapping population displacements are invaluable for targeted humanitarian response. The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 forcibly displaced millions of people from their homes including nearly 6m refugees flowing across the Nowcasting population displacement in Ukraine using social media border in just a few weeks, but information was scarce regarding displaced and vulnerable populations who remained inside Ukraine. We leveraged near real-time social media marketing data to estimate subnational population sizes every day disaggregated by age and sex. Our metric of internal displacement estimated that 5.3m people had been internally displaced away from their baseline administrative region by March 14. Results revealed four distinct displacement patterns: large scale evacuations, refugee staging areas, internal areas of refuge, and irregular dynamics. While this innovative approach provided one of the only quantitative estimates of internal displacement in virtual real-time, we conclude by acknowledging risks and challenges for the future.

The Value of Cultural Similarity for Predicting Migration: Evidence from Food and Drink Interests in Digital Trace Data

“…Similarly to Leasure et al. (2023)’s work, our methodology could capture rapid changes in populations’ interests across countries, for instance, due to unexpected migration, and could help in predicting migration flows.…”

“…For instance, Leasure et al. (2023) leveraged data from Facebook Ads to monitor in real‐time subnational population sizes and internal displacement in Ukraine on a daily basis, disaggregated by age and sex. Similarly to Leasure et al.…”

“…Facebook Ads data have become an important tool in demographic research, especially for studying migration patterns (Leasure et al. 2023; Zagheni, Weber, and Gummadi 2017; Dubois et al. 2018; Spyratos et al.…”

Sensing population displacement from Ukraine using Facebook data: Identifying potential settlement areas within host countries

“…Fear resulting from large numbers of civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure has forced people to flee their homes seeking safety, protection and assistance (UNHCR, 2023b). Over 6.5 million of Ukrainians were internally displaced from their region by 10 May 2022 (Leasure et al, 2023), and close to 8.2 million of refugees were recorded across Europe by mid-April 2023, the majority in the neighbouring countries of Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia; and non-neighbouring countries of Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Turkey (UNHCR 2023b). Some of these countries were potential destinations of immigrants from Ukraine before the Russian invasion.…”

“…The Ukraine War has triggered a number of internal displacements and a mass exodus to other countries (Ueffing et al, 2023, UNHCR, 2023b. Previous studies estimated that 6.5 million people were internally displaced away from their region as of 10 May 2022 (Leasure et al, 2023;Rowe et al, 2022). They reveal large population losses in eastern, southern and northern Ukrainian regions with a high concentration of armed conflicts, particularly in Khersonska (59%), Kharkivska (55%), Kyiv (45%) and their neighbouring regions, and gains in western areas bordering Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova, especially in Chernivetska (18%), Livivska (16%) and Vinnytska (11%).…”