Evaluating spatial service and layout efficiency of municipal Wi-Fi facilities for SmartCity planning: A case study of Wuhan city, China

This paper explores an approach to evaluating spatial service and layout efficiency of municipal Wi-Fi facilities for cyber infrastructure planning in the construction of a smart city. Based on the equilibrium principle that Wi-Fi services supply should meet the spatial demand for recreation, urgency, and security, two evaluation models were built. In the first model, the spatial service efficiency of Wi-Fi facilities is measured by a mean ratio of three types of demand spaces covered by Wi-Fi service. In the other model, spatial layout efficiency of each Wi-Fi facility is calculated by a demand load indicator - the sum of the three types of demand space's ratios of served quantity to the average quantity it should carry, and then assessed by relationship with its adjacent facilities. Corresponding statistical methods and analysis processes were also designed using the function modules found in ArcGIS software. The approach was applied to Wuhan city in 2016. After overlaying influence areas of 688 Wi-Fi facilities with demand spaces of 137 access points for recreation, 1200.99 km roads for urgency, 121.54 km2 regions for security, the results show that there exists a spatial disequilibrium between supply and demand of Wi-Fi service in Wuhan due to lack of comprehensive planning. Specifically, there are 67 points, 700.76 km roads, and 42.59 km2 regions of demand spaces covered by Wi-Fi service, with service efficiencies of 48.91%, 58.35%, and 35.04% respectively and an overall spatial service efficiency of 47.43%. Among all the Wi-Fi facilities, there are 481 carrying saturated demand, 3 straying from the centre of demand space, and 204 redundant. The overall spatial layout efficiency of Wi-Fi facilities is 43.01%. The conclusion is that the dense and massive redundant Wi-Fi facilities should be optimized, especially in the centre areas along the confluence of Yangtze and Han rivers and new Wi-Fi facilities supplemented in other ill-equipped areas. Since many metropolitan cities experience the same problem, this novel approach will find wide application in the future and offer improved evaluation strategies for researchers and policymakers. •A new scientific perspective based on supply-demand principle was established for evaluating municipal Wi-Fi facility.•A novel approach with succinct processes was designed to evaluate spatial service and layout efficiency of Wi-Fi facility.•Disequilibrium and inefficiency of public Wi-Fi facility in Wuhan, China were r