Monitoring Urban Population’s Quality of Life via Digital Footprint: The Case of Novosibirsk

Quality of life monitoring used to rely on statistical data and population surveys, but these sources increasingly lag behind the accelerating pace of the social and physical urban environments. In our chapter we put forward a set of ten indicators, each of which is derived from the city residents’ “digital footprint”: social networks, local web portals, geo-information services, etc., and devise a formula for each of them. The indicators are organized per the four sections: (1) Urban spaces, (2) Road and transport infrastructure, (3) Public and business infrastructure, and (4) Citizens’ engagement in the management of the urban environment. With the dedicated data and text mining software ( VK.barkov.net , Dostoevsky and DeepPavlov, YMapsReviewsParser), we demonstrate how the indicators can be calculated on the real data for the city of Novosibirsk. The proposed methodology might be of use to municipal authorities and city managers who seek to avoid survey bias and promptly react to the changing conditions and popular sentiments.