Living spaces, flows and structures across the EU internal borders

Knowing where, how, and for what purposes people frequently cross borders has significant policy implications. However, limited data availability often hinders effective decision-making. This contribution highlights key issues related to cross-border flows in EU border regions and their spatial implications. The lack of granular, reliable, and comparable data frequently leads to an underestimation of the true scale of cross-border movements within the EU. Additionally, the assessment of the socioeconomic potential of border regions typically does not consider the hypothetical elimination of obstacles, be they legal, administrative, infrastructural, or linguistic. This study addresses two research questions: can methodological innovations help accurately quantify existing and potential cross-border interactions, thereby overcoming current limitations in data availability and accessibility? And how can a data-driven approach support the definition and delimitation of cross-border functional areas? The contribution begins by defining cross-border areas as living spaces. It then examines conventional data sources such as administrative records, surveys, and transport data to enhance understanding of existing cross-border interactions. Following this, the study explores non-conventional data sources and methods, including mobile big data, web scraping and geospatial artificial intelligence. Lastly, new methodologies for defining cross-border functional areas are presented, along with interoperability challenges to enhance the integration of global data.