Socio-spatial Modelling of Village Territory Boundaries in North and Centre Benin

Accurate delineation of village boundaries is essential for analysing agricultural and socio-economic dynamics, yet such spatial data are often unavailable in many African countries. Ground surveys can provide this information, but they are time-consuming and costly. This study evaluates spatial models for the automatic delineation of village territories using widely available data: village coordinates, population census data, and agroecological zones. We applied five fixed-shape models (10 km square; buffers of 2.5 km, 5 km, 10 km radius; Voronoi) and two population-weighted models (buffer and Weighted Nearest Neighbour, WNN) to a dataset of 1,059 villages in northern and central Benin. This geospatial database was compiled from public sources and refined through cleaning and validation processes. Model outputs were assessed using participatory mapping data from 62 villages across four agroecological zones. Evaluation relied on four geometric indicators (territory area, user and producer accuracies, F1-score) and two landscape-based indicators (cropland fraction and NDVI). Population-weighted models outperformed fixed models on geometric criteria, with the WNN model achieving the highest F1-score (54.1% vs. 46.1% for the 5 km buffer). Landscape indicators revealed substantial ecoclimatic regional variation but limited model discrimination, suggesting similar landscapes across neighbouring villages. Integrating agroecological zoning notably improved model accuracy at the regional level. Population-weighted models demonstrated adequate precision for applications such as linking household surveys with satellite data. However, their performance declined near national borders or large natural features. The proposed methodology is scalable and reproducible across African regions where detailed administrative boundaries are lacking.