SinoGrids: a practice for open urban data in China

Abstract

In the past decade, an explosion of data has taken place in Chinese cities due to widespread use of mobile Internet devices, Web 2.0 applications, and the development of the “Wired City.” With advances in data storage and high-performance computing, big/open urban data have opened up important avenues for urban studies, planning practice, and commercial consultancy. Urban researchers and planners are eager to make use of these abundant, sophisticated, and dynamic data to deepen their understanding on urban form and functions. However, in practice, access to such urban data is limited in China due to institutional constraints on data distribution and data holders’ hesitation to share data. And this hampers urban analytics. To draw reliable conclusions about the workings of complex urban systems, efficient and effective interoperation of multisource urban datasets is needed. Also, dealing with the heterogeneity between datasets is an equally critical challenge, especially for urban planners and government officers. They would derive value from data analytics, but have little data processing experience. To address these issues, we initiated SinoGrids (Plan Xu Xiake), a crowdsourcing platform that standardizes (or “downscales”) microscale urban data in China to facilitate its sharing and interoperation. To assess the performance evaluation of SinoGrids, we propose field-testing with actual urban data and their potential users. Digital desert, a son project of SinoGrids is also included.