Modelling mobility and visualizing people's flow patterns in rural areas for future infrastructure development as a good transnational land-governance practice

Abstract

This paper summarizes a cross-border mobility study, origin-destination mobility modelling and visualization, conducted in support of the infrastructure development efforts of local authorities and NGOs on the area over the Kayanga-Geba River, at the border between Senegal and Guinea Bissau. It builds on the data collected through participatory mapping for the elaboration of the Cross-Border Land Management and Development Plans (Plans PAGET) aiming to harmonize the different national territorial management tools into a unique transnational tool through the consideration of border areas as a territorial unity. Despite a small amount of available mobility data, we were able to build a mobility model for the considered area, and implemented it in the Traffic Simulation Framework, which was later used to calculate origin-destination matrices for the studied regions in two cases: with and without a cross-border mobility. We analyzed the differences in the mobility patterns and visualized the mobility flows, deliberating on what may be the potential impacts of building a bridge in the study area. Our methodology is general and can be applied in similar studies on different areas. However, the quality of results may depend on the available data.