A Multiscale Approach for Free-Float Bike-Sharing Electronic Fence Location Planning: A Case Study of Shenzhen City

As an emerging technological means for managing free-float bike-sharing parking, electronic fences have attracted increasing attention in major cities as a solution to the challenges posed by disorderly parking of free-float bikes. Existing research has predominantly focused on employing clustering methods from the perspectives of free-float bike-sharing companies and users to plan and deploy electronic fences. However, the results often deviate significantly from the actual phenomenon. Therefore, scientific location selection is particularly important to fully harness the effectiveness of electronic fences. This paper proposes a multiscale clustering method based on free-float bike-sharing parking features to determine the optimal locations for electronic fences. A multiobjective mixed-integer programming model is established to address the location planning problem of electronic fences, determining the planning positions, quantities, and areas of electronic fences. A case study is conducted using a local area free-float bike-sharing dataset from Shenzhen city to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Comparative results with traditional approaches solely relying on K-means or DBSCAN methods demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves efficient location selection, through multiscale fusion site selection in the study area of 1.5∗1 km, and only 25 electronic fences need to be planned and deployed, covering a total area of 1691.88 square meters, which can provide rational placement solutions and better utilize the effectiveness of electronic fences. This method can thus offer decision-making support for the planning and location selection of electronic fences in free-float bike-sharing systems.