Skip to main content

A Bayesian Approach of Predicting the Movement of Internally Displaced Persons

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Social, Cultural, and Behavioral Modeling (SBP-BRiMS 2023)

Abstract

This paper proposes an approximate Bayesian model to predict the number of internally displaced people arriving to a location. Locations are characterized by their elevation, distance from point of departure, and land cover. The model is applied to the population and terrain data of the North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Results suggest that distance captures about 67% of the influence on the choice of destination; elevation captures 9%, and land cover 24%.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. The DRC: Regional refugee response plan - 2023. https://data.unhcr.org/en/documents/details/98918. Accessed 17 Jul 2023

  2. Fresh fighting drives displacement in eastern DR congo. https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2016/4/570dfb126/fresh-fighting-drives-displacement-eastern-dr-congo.html

  3. IDMC DRC Country Profile. https://www.internal-displacement.org/countries/democratic-republic-of-the-congo. Accessed 17 Jul 2023

  4. No escape for civilians trapped in eastern DRC. https://bit.ly/3pHglzt. Accessed 17 Jul 2023

  5. UN. Sustainable Forest Management for Peace Building. https://www.un.org/esa/forests/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/SFM-for-PeaceBuilding.pdf. Accessed 17 Jul 2023

  6. UNHCR. Stories. Families fleeing DRC violence. https://bit.ly/3pTxK8i. Accessed 17 Jul 2023

  7. World migration report 2022. https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/wmr-2022-interactive/. Accessed 17 Jul 2023

  8. Frydenlund, E., Foytik, P., Padilla, J.J., Ouattara, A.: Where are they headed next? Modeling emergent displaced camps in the DRC using agent-based models. In: 2018 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), pp. 22–32. IEEE (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Groen, D.: Simulating refugee movements: where would you go? Procedia Comput. Sci. 80, 2251–2255 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Hoffmann Pham, K., Luengo-Oroz, M.: Predictive modeling of movements of refugees and internally displaced people: Towards a computational framework. arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.08006 (2022)

  11. Huang, V., Unwin, J.: Markov chain models of refugee migration data. IMA J. Appl. Math. 85(6), 892–912 (2020)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  12. Johnson, R.T., Lampe, T.A., Seichter, S.: Calibration of an agent-based simulation model depicting a refugee camp scenario. In: Proceedings of the 2009 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), pp. 1778–1786. IEEE (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Kaplan, S.: The wrong prescription for the Congo. Orbis 51(2), 299–311 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Kniveton, D., Smith, C., Wood, S.: Agent-based model simulations of future changes in migration flows for Burkina Faso. Glob. Environ. Change 21, S34–S40 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Singh, L., et al.: Blending noisy social media signals with traditional movement variables to predict forced migration. In: Proceedings of the 25th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining, pp. 1975–1983 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Suleimenova, D., Bell, D., Groen, D.: A generalized simulation development approach for predicting refugee destinations. Sci. Rep. 7(1), 1–13 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Verweijen, J.: From autochthony to violence? Discursive and coercive social practices of the Mai-Mai in Fizi, eastern DR Congo. Afr. Stud. Rev. 58(2), 157–180 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation DMS-1939203. Additionally, this research was supported by a grant from the Office of Naval Research (N000141912624) through the Minerva Research Initiative. None of the views reported in the study are those of the funding organizations.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jose J. Padilla , Guohui Song or Erika Frydenlund .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Domson, O., Padilla, J.J., Song, G., Frydenlund, E. (2023). A Bayesian Approach of Predicting the Movement of Internally Displaced Persons. In: Thomson, R., Al-khateeb, S., Burger, A., Park, P., A. Pyke, A. (eds) Social, Cultural, and Behavioral Modeling. SBP-BRiMS 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14161. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43129-6_24

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43129-6_24

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-43128-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-43129-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics