Using data from Foursquare Web service to represent the commercial activity of a city

Transcription

1 Using data from Foursquare Web service to represent the commercial activity of a city Leandro Tortosa University of Alicante (Spain) tortosa@ua.es

2 Mo#va#on The city as a big source of DATA.

3 Main objective The main objective is to represent the commercial activity of a city taking as source data the social network Foursquare. The city of Murcia is selected as case study, and the location-based social network Foursquare is the main source of information.

4 The city of Murcia, object of this study. (Downtown)

5 The city of Murcia as an urban network.

6 Source of data: FOURSQUARE Foursquare (foursquare.com) is a social check-in site that enables users to share their whereabouts with their friends. The basis of the platform consists of usergenerated venues for business and points of interests from where Foursquare users can check-in. Currently, the number of registered individuals and businesses that are part of the Foursquare community surpasses the 50 million and 1.9 million businesses respectively (Foursquare, 2014). The city of Murcia is in the 4th position in the ranking of Foursquare users in Spain.

7 Data from Foursquare Foursquare organize data from categories and subcategories. Categories are fixed and subcategories are determined by the users. According to the data downloaded for the purpose of this study, Foursquare categorizes each venue into five pre-defined categories and several subcategories. CATEGORIES Outdoors & Recreation Nightlife Shops Food Arts & Entertainment

8 Subcategories OUTDOORS & RECREATIONS SHOPS FOOD NIGHTLIFE ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT Tapas Theater Mall Pizza Spanish Gastropub Brewery Movie theater Historic site Plaza Dep. Store Grocery Vegetarian Donut shop Beer garden Bar Multiplex Concert hall Park Supermarket Café Pub Stadium Outdoors Neighborhood Farmers market Clothing Sandwich Seafood American Lounge Cocktail bar Art museum Music venue Plaza Fast food Nightclub Performing arts Chinese Sciece museum Ice cream Rock club bakery NO ORGANIZATION IN THE DATA

9 CATEGORIES CATEGORIES ARE FIXED AND REPRESENT DIFFERENT SECTORS IN THE SET OF THE ECONOMIC AND RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF THE CITY. SUBCATEGORIES SUBCATEGORIES ARE NOT WELL ORGANIZED. THERE ARE TOO MANY AND SOME OF THEM ARE SIMILAR. WE PROPOSE A NEW SET OF SUBCATEGORIES

10 NEW Subcategories OUTDOORS & RECREATIONS SHOPS FOOD NIGHTLIFE ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT PLAZA MALLS SPANISH THEATER PARK-GARDEN SUPERMARKETS INTERNATIONAL BARS-MUSIC MOVIE THEATER OUTDOORS- RECREATION STORES CAFÉ-BARS ICE CREAM MUSEUMS ART GALLERY OTHERS ENTERTAINMENT WE SIMPLIFY THE NUMBER OF SUBCATEGORIES WE ORGANIZE THE COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES OF THE CITY INTO TWO TYPES: SHOPS (MALLS AND SMALL SHOPS) AND FOOD (BARS, RESTAURANTS AND NIGHTLIFE)

11 General data from Foursquare for the city of Murcia

12 Geoloca#on of the places visited by the Foursquare users

13 Data from Foursquare for the area studied of the city 66.5% of the venues in the category Shops are located within our study area. 61% of the venues obtained from the web service Foursquare in the category Food are located within our study area. 69% of the venues in the category Nightlife are located within our study area. IN GENERAL, 62% OF THE VENUES GIVEN BY FOURSQUARE USERS ARE LOCATED IN OUR STUDIO AREA.

14 To carry out the study of the commercial activity, we will arrange the categories and subcategories in a different way. The set of commercial venues will be divided into three basic types according to different sectors related to commercial activities. Thus, we distinguish the following types: TYPE I: it represents the food and recreation sector. TYPE II: it represents the small-shop sector. TYPE III: it represents the large shop sector (basically malls and supermarkets). Foursquare sets forth five categories, three of which relate to the types of commercial activity proposed and described above. Thus, the Foursquare categories that are considered of interest for this study are: shops food and nightlife.

15 Can we use the data from Foursquare Web service to represent and visualize the commercial activity of the city? In our aim to measure the commercial activity taking place in the centre of the city, based on the commercial sectors of restaurants and shops, we wonder whether the data obtained from the social network can be useful or not to carry out the graphical representation. It may be the case that the tastes or preferences of the users are not related to what we want to evaluate. Out of 1216 places visited, a total of 1081 (the sum of shops, food and nightlife) corresponds to the business we want to represent. This value represents 90% of the total data. This data allows us to draw several conclusions. First, the data provided by the social network Foursquare are appropriate to visualize the commercial activity. Second, the data show very clearly some essential features of the city, particularly highlighting their predominantly commercial and service nature.

16 The graphical representa#on Location of the data. Assign data to the nodes of the graph.

17 The graphical representa#on Location of the data. Each node has a value (gradient scale).

18 The graphical representa#on Location of the data. Interpolating to visualize the network.

19 Graphical representa#on of: BIG SHOPS

20 Graphical representa#on of: SMALL SHOPS

21 Graphical representa#on of: FOOD - NIGHTLIFE

22 CONCLUSION We used data from the social network Foursquare to represent the commercial activity of the city of Murcia, Spain. A reorganization of categories and subcategories of the different places that have been visited by the users of the network was carried out. Then, we conclude that almost 90% percent of the places visited are associated with commercial activity related to stores and food sectors. This result validates the study in the sense that the data used are consistent with the activity that we wanted to visualize.

23 Thanks for your attention!!