A consideration of an area classification method for ICT service diffusion

Abstract

In order to evolve high info-communication society quickly and economically, it is an important problem which areas are target for new ICT service diffusion. It deeply depends on potential demands in a target area. There are several to ten thousand areas corresponding to municipality or smaller administration area unit in nationwide so that we spend much time to take a reference area to forecast potential demand for a target area. This paper proposes an efficient area classifying method based on commuting inflow and outflow among areas considering spatial characteristics of ICT service diffusion. The method is expected to be able to determine areas adequately with high potential demands for new ICT services. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.