Integrating Web GIS with Multi-criteria Evaluation Techniques for Site Selection of Makerspace in Shenzhen City

Since 2014, China has experienced a rapid increase of entrepreneurship and business development, due to the strong support of the state for business incubators such as makerspace. Makerspace is an open and comprehensive service platform with low cost, convenience and comprehensive elements for the growth of small innovative enterprises and individual innovation. In terms of current development trends, the market foresees an increase in the uses of makerspaces. In this study, a Web GIS system has been constructed to assist the decision making of makerspace site selection. Firstly, four factors are selected for the multi-criteria evaluation model: (1) the convenience of transportation, (2) distance from universities and research institutes, (3) distance from high-tech parks, and (4) distance from service facilities. After being pre-processed and reclassified, these data are presented via a Web GIS system to support site selection of makerspace. HyperText Markup Language 5(HTML5), Cascading Style Sheets 3(CSS3), JavaScript (with JQuery) and an open source framework, Bootstrap, forms the basis of the front end. The format of vector data is GeoJSON. MySQL is used for the database, and fat-free framework of Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is used for the background language. The web page will return optimal sites for makerspace according to the weights selected by users. Since all data applied are from 2017, the newly established makerspaces in 2018 assessed the accuracy of the prediction, which exhibited a high prediction rate. It was observed that makerspaces in Shenzhen are mostly distributed in areas with convenient transportation, convenient living, and good access to rich scientific research resources