A new publication by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), titled Living Spaces, Flows and Structures Across the EU Internal Borders, has been published. The report examines the functioning of cross-border regions along the EU’s internal borders, everyday mobility, and the data sources and data collection methods that can be used to better understand these areas.

The publication also highlights that, due to the lack of detailed and reliable data, current statistical systems often underestimate the true scale of cross-border commuting, service use, and other cross-border interactions along the European Union’s internal borders. The authors demonstrate how both traditional data sources – such as administrative records, surveys, and transport data – and non-traditional sources and methods, including mobile big data, web scraping and geospatial artificial intelligence, can support evidence-based policymaking.

Among the authors is Viktória Jánosi, GIS Expert at CESCI, who contributed a chapter exploring the opportunities and importance of questionnaire-based surveys in the study of cross-border commuting.

The publication is available at this link.