1 Introduction - Purpose of the Map

Housing is an inseparable part of the citizens’ daily life. We rely on the communities
facilities every day, and it would be an inconvenience if we need to travel long away
from home to get to the facility we need to use often. Different people have different
needs in facilities or living environment, thus they have different preferences in living
in which part of Hong Kong. However, people often make decision relying on
ungrounded comments from others.

This map seeks to help potential home-owners or people who would like to rent flats to
see where they should live. They can see where different special facilities are clustered
so to facilitate their decision on properties rental or purchase. It is hoped that their
decision can be based on geographical evidence through this map.

2 Map Features

This map is a modern interactive web map. It is ubiquitous

and media-adequate as it can be used on different devices,
including computer and phones. The map is interactive that
users can choose which tab to view, to zoom in and zoom
out, to locate their positions through GPS on phone and to
view more details in the pop-up. As shown in figure 1, the
map is zoomed into Mei Foo, where the user is located, for
the user to view his nearby outdoor facilities. It is well
designed to be well readable and this is to be justified along
with this whole essay. It makes use of the big data provided
by the government and facilitated by Esri China. Most data
is also automatically updated with the database to provide
up-to-date information.

Figure 1 Map Interface on Phone

The base-map is imagery hybrid. This can show distinctly
The blue dot is the GPS location.
the rural and urban area of Hong Kong. Then, users can
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easily see the distributions of facilities in the urban area. Also, the map extent is
customized to fit Hong Kong only in default to make the map for convenience to use.
Concerning the layers, all layers provided by Esri China included “in Hong Kong” in
their name, and they are removed to reduce redundancy. In the pop-up text, Chinese
details and highly technical details are removed to suit this map context.

3 Discussion of the Maps

Please access the map by https://arcg.is/CfL1n. In this section, the design, result,
limitation, challenges and room for improvement of the maps in each tab will be
discussed tab by tab.

3.1 Front Page

As aforementioned, and as the subtitle suggests, this map is for people who want to rent
or buy a house in Hong Kong to use. Therefore, the target audience is the general public
which does not usually possess much geography or GIS knowledge, so it aims to be
user-friendly. A frontpage is created for the user to first understand what this map is
for, so they can choose any tab to use. As it aims to be easy to use, the map had already
presumed some occasion in which may match the description of the user, as shown in
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the tab. The map is very easy to use because the user just needs to click one of the tabs
to known “where to live”. For instance, if the user is a young family who will have their
babies soon, so they are looking to move to another place for their babies, then it is
expected that they will click the “Parents of Children” so see where the facilities for
children clusters.

This map uses the Story Map function provided by ArcGIS Online. Although story
maps are mainly used for narrative storytelling, they are essentially a series of maps. In
this map tool, technically speaking, it is just different maps to show different facilities
needed by different people and combined into a tool. Therefore, the Story Map Function
provided by ArcGIS Online perfectly match the design of this tool thus is being used.

3.2 Concerned about Air

This tab is designed for users who are concerned about air quality. This may be because
they have asthma, allergic rhinitis, eczema, or other diseases related to air quality. It is
important for them to choose a place with good air quality. This map, using the Annual
Air Quality Index (“AAQI”), can provide the air quality of each place for the users, so
they can scientifically see the air quality in Hong Kong, instead of through mere
perception. For example, normal people may perceive that Tuen Mun, as a suburb, has
high quality, but actually, from this map, users can see that the PM2.5 index is 2.3,

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which means the PM2.5 concentration in Tuen Mun is more than twice of the WHO’s
guideline, imposing a great health risk.

The limitation on this map is that the data is not automatically updated. Other tabs’
layers, which are provided by Esri China (Hong Kong), so they are kept up-to-date with
the data from data.gov.hk by the HKSAR government. Unfortunately, Esri does not
provide a feature layer on AAQI. Instead, they only provide feature layers on current
or past-24 hours of air quality. These short instance data are useless because there is
day-to-day fluctuation in air quality. Concerning choosing a place to live in, it is in
regard to a long term air quality, so annual data is much more preferable. As a result, a
layer had to be created on my own with data provided by the Environmental Protection
Department manually imported. That being said, they are not automatically updated
and may leave outdated if the layer is left not managed for a few years. To overcome
this challenge, it is hoped that there will be automatic linking for annual data.

Another room for improvement is the presentation of data. To see the AAQI of each
place, the users have to click on each place. They cannot see the AAQI in different
place together and make comparison difficult. This is due to the limited choice of
“drawing style” on ArcGIS online. The ideal way of presentation may be to show a bar
chart of the three AAQI on each location. This may be achieved by using a more
professional version of ArcGIS.

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3.3 Sports Fanatic

This tab is for users who love to do sports. It would be troublesome to live in a place
with insufficient facility to do sports. Here, the facilities of sports commonly played by
Hong Kong people, including soccer, basketball and badminton are shown on the map.
They can easily see where these facilities cluster, to facilitate their housing decision.

Clustering is enabled. Features in close proximity are integrated into one larger icon.
To be more user-friendly, the pop-up text on clustered symbol is amended to sound
more friendly. However, the drawback is that the clustered symbol is too big, which
may cover other smaller figure. This is again not customizable in ArcGIS Online and
may be fixed with a more professional version.

Another point to note is the selection of sports facilities to be shown. There are other
types of sports facilities in Hong Kong, such as baseball and netball. People who do
these uncommon sports may find this map unhelpful. Another approach of design is to
allow users to choose what features to show. However, we must do a trade-off between
easiness to use and the flexibility. The reason to show only the common sports is to
appeal to the general public. If the user have to choose what to show again, then it defeat
the very purpose of the map – to show the facilities one type of user would need. Having
to choose will make the use of the map more complicated. Thus, after thorough
consideration, it is believed that the current product is the best outcome.

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3.4 Foreigner

This map suit the need of expatriates in Hong Kong. Their children would not likely
get into traditional schools, thus need to choose the international or English Schools
Foundation (“ESF”) schools. Also, considering the ethnic minorities, their support
service centres are shown on the map.

This raises the question of not including all schools in the “Parents of Children” tab.
The justification is that schools for essential for the community, and there must be a
school in proximity wherever one lives. Thus, showing all schools is extra. However,
the case is different for ESF/international schools. They show clear clustering patterns.
For instance, there is no ESF school in the whole Western New Territories and the
Lantau. International Schools shows a linear pattern along Waterloo Road and the
southern coast of the Lantau. Also, the density of ESF/international schools is much
higher in Hong Kong Island. These patterns proved the usefulness of showing them.

Another problem is the duplicated legend. It would be better to show the same symbol
under one description only and to migrate primary and secondary into one row, but
ArcGIS Online is very restrictive on legend editing.

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3.5 Parents of Children

Parents may often bring their children to playroom or playgrounds, so living in a place
with those facilities is important.

From the map, we can see the children playroom is dispersed all over Hong Kong. Some
places are absent of children playroom, such as the Lantau Island, Tsuen Wan, Central
Hong Kong Island. Upon seeing this map, parents may refrain from choosing these
places. However, Tin Shui Wai has a high density of children playroom, so it may
advise parents to choose to live there. At the same time, users may see the abundance
of playgrounds for children in different places, as playground exhibit a nucleated-but-
scattered pattern in some places. To illustrate, there are multiple playgrounds in Tung
Chung, Tsuen Wan, Tseung Kwan O, so these places may be suitable for parents.

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3.6 Nature Lover

This is for users who love to do outdoor activities. Note that parents may like to do
outdoor activities with their children, so these users can use both the tab in combination
for their expected purpose. That being said, one people may match with several tabs,
users are not expected to strictly tie themselves to one tab only.

We can see there is no parks, zoo and garden in the inner Kowloon Peninsula. Barbecue
sites are shown more often in the Southern District. Visitor centre of country parks
instead of country parks themselves are shown is because the extent of country parks is
too large, so showing it is ineffective. Also, not all part of country parks is safe for
hiking, while the presence visitor centre shows that the area is popular for hiking. To
be user-oriented, visitor centres are shown.

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3.7 Search Hong Kong Properties for Sale

Considering the purpose of the map, it would be convenient to integrate a property

searching website into the map tool to make the map tool comprehensive. After finding
a property in the website, the user can copy the address, then go back to other tabs,
insert the address in the search function, and examine again in a closer scale to see
whether its surrounding has sufficient facilities.

4 Conclusion and Long Term Goal

The limitation aforementioned should be fixed, and most can be achieved by using more
professional GIS software. More tabs can be added to suit the needs of different people.
Also, we may not exactly know what facilities each group needs unless we conduct
researches, which requires lots of resources. Nevertheless, this tool remains overall
effective.

In the long term, it is believed that this map, with further development, can facilitate
the construction of Hong Kong as a smart city. This map concerns the real estate market,
full of commercial value, its development may be sustainable. Currently, the map can
be updated automatically to a certain extent. But with further development, through

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enhanced data analysis, sharing of data analysis with institutional set-up and to receive
user’s feedbacks for key performance indicator, then this map can be a smart map 1. The
collection of user feedback is currently undergoing by the provision of the creator’s
email address on the front page. We hope that this smart map will encourage smart
living, and be part of the “smart city” infrastructure.

1
Loo, Becky P.Y. (2019) “Smart Maps”, Keynote Speech at the International Conference on Urban
Computing and Smart Planning, Nanjing, China, October 12-14, 2019

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