Published: Quantifying urban attractiveness from the distribution and density of digital footprints

My paper Quantifying urban attractiveness from the distribution and density of digital footprints co-authored with Andrea Vacarri, Alexandre Gerber, Assaf Biderman and Carlo Ratti has been published in the Volume 4 (pp. 175-200) of the International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research as part of a special issues on Next Generation Digital Earth. The Journal is published free of charge and adheres to the Open Archives Initiative, which aims to facilitate the dissemination of electronic content.

Abstract. In the past, sensors networks in cities have been limited to fixed sensors, embedded in particular locations, under centralised control. Today, new applications can leverage wireless devices and use them as sensors to create aggregated information. In this paper, we show that the emerging patterns unveiled through the analysis of large sets of aggregated digital footprints can provide novel insights into how people experience the city and into some of the drivers behind these emerging patterns. We particularly explore the capacity to quantify the evolution of the attractiveness of urban space with a case study of in the area of the New York City Waterfalls, a public art project of four man-made waterfalls rising from the New York Harbor. Methods to study the impact of an event of this nature are traditionally based on the collection of static information such as surveys and ticket-based people counts, which allow to generate estimates about visitors’ presence in specific areas over time. In contrast, our contribution makes use of the dynamic data that visitors generate, such as the density and distribution of aggregate phone calls and photos taken in different areas of interest and over time. Our analysis provides novel ways to quantify the impact of a public event on the distribution of visitors and on the evolution of the attractiveness of the points of interest in proximity. This information has potential uses for local authorities, researchers, as well as service providers such as mobile network operators.

Why do I blog this: Last version of the paper that presents our study of the evolution of the attractiveness of the New York City waterfront. It was improved based on the reviews that I documented in Accepted Paper: Quantifying urban attractiveness from the distribution and density of digital footprints. This work has also been vulgarized in: NYC Waterfalls: How Real-Time Cellphone Data Can Impact Local Economies.