How People Spend Christmas in Beijing----Insight from City Heat Map and Social Media Data

New year comes, and new chapter of life comes again. A good topic is to look back our nice holidays.

How the Christmas in China? Different people have different feeling about this holiday. Let the big data to answer this question.

Big data collected from 100 heat-maps (one map every 30min) of real-time population around Beijing city area from 23 to 26^th December 2016.

Analysis are then done below based on big data methodology.
First, let us have a look how are people moving around over Christmas weekend. After careful analysis, the picture below shows how people are moving dynamically from 7：00-24：00.

Ok, now we know how people moving around the city, but where are they going to? So I add more than 240, 000 POI (Point of Interest) to our map in ARCGIS, including all data of transportation, restaurants and recreational facilities.

After analyzing it in ARCGIS, we get some interesting results. One example is to identify “Where is the most popular place for Christmas dinner?”

The result is indeed very interesting! However, can we know how are people gathering in different time periods?
Yes, we can! By using the Spatial Analysis and Modelling Tool, we are able to find out the HH (High-High Cluster), HL(High-Low Outlier), LH(Low-High Outlier) and LL(Low-Low Cluster).

In picture below it shows the HH and HL in red, and show the LH and LL in white, we can then get the population trends in Christmas Even night.

Wahoo, amazing working! But maybe we want to know more. What they talking ? How they feeling ? Where are they come from ?  and more and more more …
NO problem! The online social media can answer it.  All “check in” data from WEIBO (the largest social network service in China) around “The PLace” in Christmas day are collected (“The Place” is a shopping mall in Sanlitun area).

From this data, a lot of information is unfolding.

And how such big data analytic method support and make our city green, sustainable and smart?
Obviously, as shown in this report, advanced and sophisticated analytics based on massive, dynamic, inter-related dataset and big data methodology offers us a powerful tool to deeply understand dynamic interaction between the people and the city. A lot of details can be conveyed in such ways, which were usually hidden behind in complex social system.  

“For citizens such data and its analysis offers insights into city life, aids everyday living and decision-making, and empowers alternative visions for city development.”
“For governments, big data and integrated analysis and control centres offer more efficient and effective city management and regulation. ”
“For corporations, big data analytics offers new, long term business opportunities as key players in city governance.” [Kitchin, R. (2014). The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism.GeoJournal, 79(1), 1-14.]

                                                               This blog base on Report: "Spatio-Temporal Analytics of Human Mobility in Big Events(Christmas) in Beijing", Yuan Xiong (2017)