POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF ICT ON FACE-TO-FACE MEETING OPPORTUNITIES: A GIS-BASED TIME-GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORATORY APPROACH

摘要

People in modern societies are increasingly experiencing the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) such as the Internet and cell phones on their daily activities and their interactions with other people. These changing human activity and interaction patterns due to the use of ICT have important implications to travel behavior, urban form and even fundamental recognition of geographic space. It is challenging for researchers in both geography and transportation to analyze and understand the complex interactions between ICT and human activities. Geographic information systems (GIS) have been suggested as a useful spatial-temporal analytical environment to support studies of individual activities under the time geography framework. Although some progress has been made in the development of space-time GIS for tracking and analyzing individual activities and their interactions in a space-time context, additional GIS functions are needed to facilitate the analysis of mutual interactions between ICT and human activities. This study uses an example of arranging a face-to-face meeting between two people to illustrate the impacts on potential meeting opportunities in both spatial and temporal dimensions under the scenarios of having access to cell phones versus not having access to cell phones. Our approach and scenarios are implemented in a space-time GIS to demonstrate the feasibility of our design, and to develop analytical functions in support of quantitative assessments of ICT's impacts on human activities.