Urban Niche Assessment: An Approach Integrating Social Media Analysis, Spatial Urban Indicators and Geo-Statistical Techniques

Abstract

Cities are human ecosystems. Understanding human ecology is important for designing and planning the built environment. The ability to respond to changes and adapt actions in a positive way helps determine the health of cities. Recently, many studies have highlighted the great potential of photographic data shared on the Flickr platform for the analysis of environmental perceptions in landscape and urban planning. Other research works used panoramic images from the Google Street View (GSV) web service to extract urban quality data. Although other researches have used social media to characterize human habitat from an emotional point of view, there is still a lack of knowledge of the correlation between environmental and physical variables of the city and visual perception, especially at a scale suitable for urban planning and design. In ecology, the environmental suitability of a territory for a given biological community is studied through species distribution models (SDM). In this work we have adopted the state of the art of SDM (the ensemble approach) to develop a methodology transferable to cities with different sizes and characteristics that uses data deriving from many sources available on a global scale: social media platform, Google internet services, shared geographical information, remote sensing and geomorphological data. The result of our application in the city of Livorno offers important information on the most significant variables for the conservation, planning and design of urban public spaces at the project scale. However, further research developments will be needed to test the model in cities of different sizes and geographic locations, integrate the model with other social media, other databases and with traditional surveys and improve the quality of indicators that can be derived from information shared on the Internet.

Impact of Climate Change on Wine Tourism: An Approach through Social Media Data

“…Yoshimura and Hiura [34] and Walden-Schreiner et al [35] analyzed the relationships between shooting locations of geo-referenced photos on Flickr with the environmental characteristics of the territory and the presence of infrastructure to provide management strategies for the conservation of natural resources, while providing opportunities for tourism and recreation. Urban green spaces have also been investigated with an ensemble of human niche models [36]. Recently, Alampi Sottini et al [3,37] and Barbierato et al [38] applied Flickr data to the landscape preferences of wine tourists in Tuscany (Italy).…”

The Role and Impact of Social Media Data Analysis in Art Event Planning

“…Through social media platforms, participants can keep abreast of the information and latest developments of the activities. At the same time, the organizer can also understand the effect of the activity and the needs of the participants through the comments and feedback of the participants so as to adjust and improve the activity [10][11][12].…”

“…Jiahui Chen. Applied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences, 9(1) (2024)[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] …”

Atmospheric agents and spatial planning. Case study of the municipality of Rosignano Marittimo in Tuscany

“…Another philosophical horizon is opened by Timothy Morton in outlining the realm of hyperobjects 1 . Hyperobjects are increasingly emerging in the framework of philosophical reflection as «entities that become visible only by resorting to post-Humean statistical causality» [5].…”

“…A second body of studies is aimed at characterising the vulnerability of the territory through the assessment of the impacts that climate change may generate on urban settlements consistent with the IPCC (2014) definition [2]. The study based on remotely sensed data (LiDAR, high-resolution remote sensing imagery, and from the LANDSAT 8 platform) prepared a methodology [1] for estimating current ground temperatures and future climate projections.…”