Is it possible to capture the socio-economic footprint of the human behavior in our cities or neighborhoods? Nowadays, all human activities, ranging from the people we call, the places we visit, the things we eat and the products we buy, generates data. This can be analyzed over long periods to paint a comprehensive portrait of human behavior within the city boundaries. These geolocated digital traces, when combined with other information streams from national census, can be used to extract information about the potential needs and the routines in the collective behavior of different groups of citizens. We will analyze this data to understand the extent to which the urban activities of different population groups or communities are driven by both socio-economic differences and cities’ structure. This new quantitative approach can provide new insights for more inclusive policies to help future urban development.
Dr. Riccardo Di Clemente is a Newton International Fellow of Royal Society at University College London UCL at the Centre for Advance Spatial Analysis (CASA).
The project, started during Riccardo PostDoc at MIT and has been funded by the Gates Foundation, UN and Royal Society to develop new methodologies using Complex systems and Computational Science tools to analyze credit card data and discover new patterns in peoples’ socio-economic behaviors.
For more information website: www.riccardodiclemente.com