The planning challenge: NGOs working with refugee camp management aim to direct resources to where people are. The uncertainty: NGOs don’t know how many persons are in a camp, nor can they adequately judge if (local) trends are emerging.

Seita, together with PNGK and IOM, the UN migration agency, developed the Aileen box. This box helps to automate and improve the task of counting attendance manually. The Aileen project is a hardware/software suite designed for NGOs. It includes a cloud dashboard to establish a very valuable data service for humanitarian aid NGOs of various kinds.

Aileen counts signals from devices with a wireless interface enabled (such as smartphones) to deliver population data in an organised and actionable format. This WiFi-based mapping of the movement of people is user-friendly, open-source, in compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation, and provides real-time information.