Mobile networks are central to modern digital life, generating vast amounts of metadata that offer valuable insights into human behavior, urban dynamics, and system performance. This thesis examines how mobile network metadata can be more effectively geolocated, shared, and applied to address both societal and infrastructure challenges. First, we address the inaccuracies of traditional spatial mapping methods like Voronoi tessellations and introduce two improved models: VoronoiBoost and DeepMEND, the latter boosting geolocation accuracy by over 55%. We validate their effectiveness through real-world use cases, including network planning and population estimation. To support reproducibility and accessibility, we also release the NetMob 2023 dataset, which contains high-resolution service-level mobile traffic data across 20 French cities, helping to foster a growing research community in metadata analysis.

Building on these foundations, the thesis then examines novel applications of mobile metadata. We uncover strong links between mobile service usage and electoral outcomes in France, finding that digital consumption patterns can outperform socioeconomic indicators in explaining voting behavior. We also analyze how service-level traffic reveals shifts in political polarization and urban function, both during regular activity and under disruptions like COVID-19 lockdowns. Finally, we evaluate five energy-saving strategies deployed in a live European mobile network, quantifying their effects on energy use and user experience. Overall, this work advances the use of mobile metadata to inform research, public policy, and more sustainable network operations.

About Orlando E. Martínez-Durive

Orlando is a Ph.D. student in Telematics Engineering at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and a research assistant in the Networks Data Science Group at IMDEA Networks Institute, under the supervision of Prof. Marco Fiore. His research interests focus on remote sensing, metadata analysis, and big data. He has collaborated with academic researchers from various countries as well as major European industry players, including Telefónica and Orange. He has completed internships at Telefónica Innovación Digital in Madrid, the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, and Cisco ThousandEyes in Greece. His work has been presented at leading conferences such as IEEE INFOCOM, ACM IMC, IEEE SECON, and TMA. Beyond academia, he enjoys science communication and has participated as an exhibitor at the Madrid Science Fair in the 2023, 2024, and 2025 editions.

Supervisor de tesis: Dr. Marco Fiore, IMDEA Networks Institute, España

Universidad: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Programa de doctorado: Ingeniería Telemática

Miembros del tribunal:

• Presidente: Guillermo Suarez-Tangil, Assistant Professor at University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain & IMDEA Networks Institute, Spain
• Secretaria: Yuya Shibuya. Associate Professor at The University of Tokyo
• Miembros del panel: Vincent Gauthier. Associate Professor at CNRS SAMOVAR, Telecom SudParis, Institut Polytechnique de Paris