Clustering-Based Spatial Analysis of ICT Penetration in Iraq's Governorates

The penetration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) usually differs in different geographical areas. The evaluation of ICT distribution in developing countries, including Iraq, is of high importance in the government's development plans. This study aims to analyze the regional ICT disparities and provide applicable insights to policymakers; helping them to improve their policy decisions and develop ICT infrastructures efficiently. Furthermore, visualizing the analysis results on geographical maps will help officials have a better insight into the overall situation of ICT prevalence in different areas. This study evaluates the digital imbalance in eighteen governorates of Iraq; indicating 33 factors related to ICT in governorates of Iraq in 2018, integrated by OCHA's Centre for Humanitarian Data. We used Global Moran's I measure to find the overall trend of each ICT variable on the whole map of Iraq. The results show that the values of only seven factors tend to be similar in neighboring governorates, so it shows the presence of clusters based on these variables. We also used Local Moran's I measure for those seven factors and the results show the presence of groups of governorates based on each factor. Later, we cluster governorates based on the seven ICT factors using K-Means Clustering and Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering. The results of both clustering methods were similar to three clusters of governorates in terms of ICT prevalence. The result groups contain 3, 6, and 9 governorates. We used the Silhouette score and Calinski-Harabasz score to validate the clustering results, which show reasonable clustering. The clustering results provide policymakers with comprehensive insights into groups of governorates that have similar ICT issues. We also visualize the clustering results on the Iraq governorates map, contributed by OCHA Iraq which shows Iraq's administrative decision boundaries.