Digital Desert

Digital desert is termed as places where no or very few footprints harvested by digital devices geographically exist. DD is a son project of BCL SinoGrids (http://www.beijingcitylab.com/projects-1/14-sinogrids/).

We derived 1km*1km digital deserts by selecting those urban areas which have less than 6 locational Weibos, Flickr photos and Jiepang check-ins (shared in SinoGrids). The above map shows digital deserts with over one grid. In the close future, we would extend our digital footprints to Dianping comments and check-ins on one hand. Note that the above interactive map is full-screenable.


Courtesy of the contributors for SinoGrids.

Results at the provincial level

Results at the city proper level

Media coverage

“今天的天蓝得好舒服!我在王府井”。这是一条带有地理位置的普通微博,人们对此早已司空见惯,根据新浪微博公布的数据,共有4.3万人在“王府井”签到过,相伴这些签到的,是6.8万条“热议”,4.4万张“热图”。对于这类热门地点,微博把一切相关内容都称为“热”真是一点问题也没有,但同样在北京市区,也有一些地点,方圆一公里也只有一两个人签到,甚至干脆一个也没有,它们是被互联网遗忘的角落——中国城市的“数字沙漠”。

北京市城市规划设计研究院高级工程师龙瀛和香港中文大学的周钰伦等学者在构建他们的城市数据共享平台“徐霞客计划”(SinoGrid)时,注意到这些散布在大数据城市地图边缘的“数字沙漠”,于是将它们纳入了研究。经他们计算后发现,数字沙漠在中国城市的分布并不均匀,它在大城市和经济发达的城市出现几率较低,而在中小城市和经济落后的城市出现几率较高。然而,经济发展程度并不是数字沙漠的唯一解释,部分扩张策略冒进的城市,同样也是数字沙漠的高发地。

Fore more, please click HERE.

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大陆城市“数字沙漠”调查 - 凤凰周刊.pdf
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