WO2018223952A1

WO2018223952A1 - Systems and methods for region division

Info

Publication number: WO2018223952A1
Application number: PCT/CN2018/089924
Authority: WO
Inventors: Junqiang FU; Pei Li; Fan Yang; Longzhi DU
Original assignee: Beijing Didi Infinity Technology And Development Co., Ltd.
Priority date: 2017-06-06
Filing date: 2018-06-05
Publication date: 2018-12-13
Also published as: TW201903660A; CN110914855A; TWI763863B; CN110914855B

Abstract

A method for region division related to an online to offline service may include obtaining positioning information of each target unit region in a target region, which includes a plurality of target unit regions. The method may also include determining a parameter for each of the plurality of target unit regions. The method may also include clustering the plurality of target unit regions into a plurality of groups based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions and the positioning information. The method may also include dividing the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups. The method may also include determining a strategy associated with the parameter based on the plurality of sub-regions.

Description

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR REGION DIVISION

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority to Chinese Patent Application No. 201710418203.6 filed on June 6, 2017, and Chinese Patent Application No. 201710476718.1 filed on June 21, 2017, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates to computer technology, and particularly, to systems and methods for region division related to an online to offline (O2O) service.

BACKGROUND

At present, with the development of Big Data and Internet, online to offline (O2O) services become more and more popular. In some cases, regional management (e.g., transportation capacity scheduling, or price adjustment) may be performed in the online to offline service based on predictive statistic values such as resource supply and resource demand. Region division is important in regional management. In the existing methods for region division, usually a target region is mechanically and artificially divided into a plurality of sub-regions. Such an approach has severe limitations such as lack of rationality and low efficiency. Therefore, it is desirable to provide methods and systems to divide a target region rationally and efficiently, providing a basis for improvement of the O2O service.

SUMMARY

According to a first aspect of the present disclosure, a system for region division related to an online to offline (O2O) service may include one or more storage media and one or more processors configured to communicate with the one or more storage media. The one or more storage media may include a set of instructions. When the one or more processors executing the set of instructions, the one or more processors may be directed to perform one or more of the following operations. The one or more processors may obtain positioning information of each target unit region in a target region, which includes a plurality of target unit regions. The one or more processors may determine a parameter for each of the plurality of target unit regions. The one or more processors may cluster the plurality of target unit regions into a plurality of groups based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions and the positioning information. The one or more processors may divide the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups. The one or more processors may determine a strategy associated with the parameter based on the plurality of sub-regions.

In some embodiments, to cluster the plurality of target unit regions into the plurality of groups based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions, the one or more processors may repeat an operation until all the target unit regions are clustered. The operation may include determining target unit regions to be clustered from the plurality of target unit regions. The operation may also include determining a start unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered. The parameter of the start unit region may be maximum or minimum among the target unit regions to be clustered. The operation may also include determining one of the plurality of groups as the group including the start unit region.

In some embodiments, to determine the one of the plurality of groups as the group including the start unit region, the one or more processors may initiate an iteration process including a plurality of iterations. Each of the plurality of iterations may include determining a reference region. The reference region may be the start unit region in a first iteration of the plurality of iterations or a previously updated reference region in a previous iteration. Each of the plurality of iterations may also include selecting a pending unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered. The pending unit region may be adjacent to the reference region. The parameter of the pending unit region may be maximum or minimum among the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region. Each of the plurality of iterations may also include determining a difference between the parameters of the start unit region and the pending unit region. Each of the plurality of iterations may also include determining whether the difference is greater than a parameter threshold. Each of the plurality of iterations may also include determining an updated reference region by adding the pending unit region to the reference region in response to a determination that the difference is equal to or less than a parameter threshold. Each of the plurality of iterations may also include initiating a new iteration. Each of the plurality of iterations may also include terminating the iteration process in response to a determination that the difference is greater than the parameter threshold. Each of the plurality of iterations may also include determining the reference region determined in a last iteration of the plurality of iterations as the one of the plurality of groups.

In some embodiments, each of the plurality of iterations may also include determining a number of the iterations that have been initiated. Each of the plurality of iterations may also include determining whether the number of the iterations that have been initiated is equal to a number threshold. Each of the plurality of iterations may also include terminating the iteration process in response to a determination that the number of the iterations that have been initiated is equal to the number threshold.

In some embodiments, each of the plurality of groups may include at least one of the plurality of target unit regions. For each group that includes two or more of the plurality of target unit regions, differences of the parameters between any two of the two or more of the plurality of target unit regions may be equal to or less than a parameter threshold, and the two or more of the plurality of target unit regions may form a continuous region.

In some embodiments, to divide the target region into the plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups, the one or more processors may designate, for each group that includes one target unit region, the target unit region as one of the plurality of sub-regions. The one or more processors may combine, for each group that includes two or more target unit regions, the two or more target unit regions into a single region. The one or more processors may designate the single region as one of the plurality of sub-regions.

In some embodiments, the parameter of the target unit region may include at least one of resource supply related to the online to offline service, resource demand related to the online to offline service, and a difference between the resource supply and the resource demand.

In some embodiments, the strategy associated with the parameter may include at least one of transportation capacity scheduling and price adjustment related to the online to offline service in at least one of the plurality of sub-regions.

According to another aspect of the present disclosure, a system for region division related to an online to offline (O2O) service may include one or more storage media and one or more processors configured to communicate with the one or more storage media. The one or more storage media may include a set of instructions. When the one or more processors executing the set of instructions, the one or more processors may be directed to perform one or more of the following operations. The one or more processors may obtain a plurality of service requests, each of which includes a departure location in a target region. The one or more processors may determine a plurality of sub-regions in the target region. For each of the plurality of sub-regions, the one or more processors may determine a number of the service requests of which the departure locations are located in the sub-region. The one or more processors may compare the number of the service requests to a request threshold. The one or more processors may designate the sub-region as a hot region in response to a comparison result that the number of the service requests is greater than the request threshold. The one or more processors may transmit one or more messages relating to the hot regions to an electronic device.

In some embodiments, to determine the plurality of sub-regions in the target region, the one or more processors may determine, in the target region, target unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations. The one or more processors may combine the target unit regions into the plurality of sub-regions, wherein distances between any two of the plurality of sub-regions are greater than a distance threshold.

In some embodiments, to determine, in the target region, the target unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations, the one or more processors may divide the target region into a plurality of unit regions. For each of the departure locations, the one or more processors may determine one of the plurality of unit regions that includes the each of the departure locations. The one or more processors may designate the unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations as the target unit regions.

In some embodiments, the departure locations and the plurality of unit regions may be represented by longitude and latitude. To determine, for the each of the departure locations, the one of the plurality of unit regions that includes the each of the departure locations, the one or more processors may process the longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations to obtain processed longitudes and latitudes, wherein the number of digits after a decimal point of the processed longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations is equal to that of the unit regions. The one or more processors may determine the one of the plurality of unit regions of which the longitude and latitude is equal to the processed longitude and latitude of the each of the departure locations.

In some embodiments, the departure locations may be represented by longitude and latitude. To determine, in the target region, the target unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations, the one or more processors may process the longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations to make an equal number of digits after a decimal point of the longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations. The one or more processors may determine the target unit regions based on the processed longitude and latitude of the departure locations. Each of the target unit regions may include the departure locations with an equal processed longitude and latitude.

In some embodiments, the electronic device may be associated with a service provider.

In some embodiments, for each of the plurality of sub-regions, the one or more processors may designate the sub-region as a non-hot region in response to the comparison result that the number of the service requests is less than or equal to the request threshold. The one or more messages may be configured to increase a service price related to at least one hot region to attract the service providers in at least one non-hot region to the at least one hot region, transmit at least one special offer related to the online to offline service to at least one service requester in at least one non-hot region, or transmit positioning information of the hot regions to at least one service provider in the target region.

According to yet another aspect of the present disclosure, a method for region division related to an online to offline (O2O) service may include one or more of the following operations. One or more processors may obtain positioning information of each target unit region in a target region, which includes a plurality of target unit regions. The one or more processors may determine a parameter for each of the plurality of target unit regions. The one or more processors may cluster the plurality of target unit regions into a plurality of groups based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions and the positioning information. The one or more processors may divide the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups. The one or more processors may determine a strategy associated with the parameter based on the plurality of sub-regions.

According to yet another aspect of the present disclosure, a method for region division related to an online to offline (O2O) service may include one or more of the following operations. One or more processors may obtain a plurality of service requests, each of which includes a departure location in a target region. The one or more processors may determine a plurality of sub-regions in the target region. For each of the plurality of sub-regions, the one or more processors may determine a number of the service requests of which the departure locations are located in the sub-region. The one or more processors may compare the number of the service requests to a request threshold. The one or more processors may designate the sub-region as a hot region in response to a comparison result that the number of the service requests is greater than the request threshold. The one or more processors may transmit one or more messages relating to the hot regions to an electronic device.

According to yet another aspect of the present disclosure, a system for region division related to an online to offline (O2O) service may include a first obtaining unit configured to obtain positioning information of each target unit region in a target region, which includes a plurality of target unit regions. The system may also include a second obtaining unit configured to determine a parameter for each of the plurality of target unit regions. The system may also include a clustering unit configured to cluster the plurality of target unit regions into a plurality of groups based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions and the positioning information. The system may also include a division unit configured to divide the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups, and determine a strategy associated with the parameter based on the plurality of sub-regions.

According to yet another aspect of the present disclosure, a system for region division related to an online to offline (O2O) service may include an acquisition unit configured to obtain a plurality of service requests, each of which includes a departure location in a target region. The system may also include a determination unit configured to determine a plurality of sub-regions in the target region, and determine, for each of the plurality of sub-regions, a number of the service requests of which the departure locations are located in the sub-region. The system may also include a judgement unit configured to compare, for each of the plurality of sub-regions, the number of the service requests to a request threshold, and designate the sub-region as a hot region in response to a comparison result that the number of the service requests is greater than the request threshold. The system may also include a transmission unit configured to transmit one or more messages relating to the hot regions to an electronic device.

According to yet another aspect of the present disclosure, a non-transitory computer readable medium may comprise at least one set of instructions. The at least one set of instructions may be executed by one or more processors of a computer server. The one or more processors may obtain positioning information of each target unit region in a target region, which includes a plurality of target unit regions. The one or more processors may determine a parameter for each of the plurality of target unit regions. The one or more processors may cluster the plurality of target unit regions into a plurality of groups based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions and the positioning information. The one or more processors may divide the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups. The one or more processors may determine a strategy associated with the parameter based on the plurality of sub-regions.

According to yet another aspect of the present disclosure, a non-transitory computer readable medium may comprise at least one set of instructions. The at least one set of instructions may be executed by one or more processors of a computer server. The one or more processors may obtain a plurality of service requests, each of which includes a departure location in a target region. The one or more processors may determine a plurality of sub-regions in the target region. For each of the plurality of sub-regions, the one or more processors may determine a number of the service requests of which the departure locations are located in the sub-region. The one or more processors may compare the number of the service requests to a request threshold. The one or more processors may designate the sub-region as a hot region in response to a comparison result that the number of the service requests is greater than the request threshold. The one or more processors may transmit one or more messages relating to the hot regions to an electronic device.

Additional features will be set forth in part in the description which follows, and in part will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon examination of the following and the accompanying drawings or may be learned by production or operation of the examples. The features of the present disclosure may be realized and attained by practice or use of various aspects of the methodologies, instrumentalities, and combinations set forth in the detailed examples discussed below.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present disclosure is further described in terms of exemplary embodiments. These exemplary embodiments are described in detail with reference to the drawings. These embodiments are non-limiting exemplary embodiments, in which like reference numerals represent similar structures throughout the several views of the drawings, and wherein:

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating an exemplary online to offline service system according to some embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram illustrating exemplary hardware and/or software components of a computing device according to some embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram illustrating exemplary hardware and/or software components of a mobile device according to some embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary processing engine according to some embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary process for region division according to some embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram illustrating region division based on a plurality of groups of target unit regions according to some embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 7 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary process for region division according to some embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 8 is a schematic diagram illustrating clustering a plurality of target unit regions according to some embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 9 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary process for determining a hot region according to an embodiment of the present disclosure; and

FIG. 10 is a schematic diagram illustrating an exemplary map displaying a plurality of hot regions according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The following description is presented to enable any person skilled in the art to make and use the present disclosure and is provided in the context of a particular application and its requirements. Various modifications to the disclosed embodiments will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art, and the general principles defined herein may be applied to other embodiments and applications without departing from the spirit and scope of the present disclosure. Thus, the present disclosure is not limited to the embodiments shown but is to be accorded the widest scope consistent with the claims.

The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular example embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting. As used herein, the singular forms “a, ” “an, ” and “the” may be intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms “comprise, ” “comprises, ” and/or “comprising, ” “include, ” “includes, ” and/or “including, ” when used in this specification, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof.

These and other features, and characteristics of the present disclosure, as well as the methods of operation and functions of the related elements of structure and the combination of parts and economies of manufacture, may become more apparent upon consideration of the following description with reference to the accompanying drawings, all of which form a part of this disclosure. It is to be expressly understood, however, that the drawings are for the purpose of illustration and description only and are not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure. It is understood that the drawings are not to scale.

The flowcharts used in the present disclosure illustrate operations that systems implement according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. It is to be expressly understood, the operations of the flowchart may be implemented not in order. Conversely, the operations may be implemented in inverted order, or simultaneously. Moreover, one or more other operations may be added to the flowcharts. One or more operations may be removed from the flowcharts.

Moreover, the systems and methods in the present disclosure may be applied to any application scenario in which region division is required. For example, the system or method of the present disclosure may be applied to different transportation systems for territories such as land, ocean, aerospace, or the like, or any combination thereof. The transportation system may provide transportation services of taking a subject from one location to another location using a vehicle. The subject may include passengers and/or goods. The vehicle of the transportation service may include a taxi, a private car, a hitch, a bus, a train, a bullet train, a high speed rail, a subway, a vessel, an aircraft, a spaceship, a hot-air balloon, a driverless vehicle, a bicycle, a tricycle, a motorcycle, or the like, or any combination thereof. The transportation service may include a taxi hailing service, a chauffeur service, a delivery service, a carpooling service, a bus service, a take-out service, a driver hiring service, a shuttle service, a travel service, or the like, or any combination thereof. As another example, the system or method of the present disclosure may be applied to a navigation service, a shopping service, a house service, a location based service (LBS) , or the like, or any combination thereof. The application scenarios of the system or method of the present disclosure may include a web page, a plug-in of a browser, a client terminal, a custom system, an internal analysis system, an artificial intelligence robot, or the like, or any combination thereof.

The terms “passenger, ” “requester, ” “requestor, ” “service requester, ” “service requestor, ” and “customer” in the present disclosure are used interchangeably to refer to an individual, an entity or a tool that may request or order a service. Also, the terms “driver, ” “provider, ” “service provider, ” and “supplier” in the present disclosure are used interchangeably to refer to an individual, an entity or a tool that may provide a service or facilitate the providing of the service. The term “user” in the present disclosure may refer to an individual, an entity or a tool that may request a service, order a service, provide a service, or facilitate the providing of the service. In the present disclosure, terms “requester” and “requester terminal” may be used interchangeably, and terms “provider” and “provider terminal” may be used interchangeably.

The terms “request, ” “service, ” “service request, ” and “order” in the present disclosure are used interchangeably to refer to a request that may be initiated by a passenger, a requester, a service requester, a customer, a driver, a provider, a service provider, a supplier, or the like, or any combination thereof. The service request may be accepted by any one of a passenger, a requester, a service requester, a customer, a driver, a provider, a service provider, or a supplier. The service request may be chargeable or free.

The positioning technology used in the present disclosure may be based on a global positioning system (GPS) , a global navigation satellite system (GLONASS) , a compass navigation system (COMPASS) , a Galileo positioning system, a quasi-zenith satellite system (QZSS) , a wireless fidelity (WiFi) positioning technology, or the like, or any combination thereof. One or more of the above positioning systems may be used interchangeably in the present disclosure.

An aspect of the present disclosure relates to systems and methods for region division related to an online to offline service. A target region may be divided into a plurality of target unit regions. For each target unit region, the server may determine predictive data (e.g., the number of service requests in a target unit region in the next 10 minutes) . The server may cluster the target unit regions into a plurality of groups based on the predictive data. Each of the plurality of groups may include one or more target unit regions. In the group that includes two or more target unit regions, the differences between the predictive data of any two of the two or more target unit regions may be less than a parameter threshold. The two or more target unit regions may form a continuous region. The server may divide the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups.

Another aspect of the present disclosure relates to systems and methods for region division related to an online to offline service. A server may determine a plurality of target unit regions in a target region. In each target unit region, there are a plurality of service requests corresponding to a same departure location that is located in the target unit region. The server may combine two or more target unit regions into a sub-region. The distances between any two of the sub-regions may be greater than a distance threshold. For a sub-region, if the number of service requests in the sub-region is greater than a request threshold, the sub-region may be designated as a hot region.

Compared to artificial region division, systems and methods for region division in the present disclosure divide a target region automatically based on resource supply and resource demand related to an online to offline service in the target region, which is more efficient and more rational.

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating an exemplary online to offline service system according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. The online to offline service system 100 may include a server 110, a network 120, a requester terminal 130, a provider terminal 140, a storage device 150, and a positioning system 160.

In some embodiments, the server 110 may be a single server, or a server group. The server group may be centralized, or distributed (e.g., the server 110 may be a distributed system) . In some embodiments, the server 110 may be local or remote. For example, the server 110 may access information and/or data stored in the requester terminal 130, the provider terminal 140, the storage device 150 and/or the positioning system 160 via the network 120. As another example, the server 110 may be directly connected to the requester terminal 130, the provider terminal 140, the storage device 150 and/or the positioning system 160 to access stored information and/or data. In some embodiments, the server 110 may be implemented on a cloud platform. Merely by way of example, the cloud platform may include a private cloud, a public cloud, a hybrid cloud, a community cloud, a distributed cloud, an inter-cloud, a multi-cloud, or the like, or any combination thereof. In some embodiments, the server 110 may be implemented on a computing device 200 having one or more components illustrated in FIG. 2.

In some embodiments, the server 110 may include a processing engine 112. The processing engine 112 may process information and/or data relating to region division to perform one or more functions described in the present disclosure. For example, the processing engine 112 may divide a target region into a plurality of sub-regions by clustering a plurality of target unit regions in the target region into a plurality of groups. In some embodiments, the processing engine 112 may include one or more processing engines (e.g., single-core processing engine (s) or multi-core processor (s) ) . The processing engine 112 may include a central processing unit (CPU) , an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) , an application-specific instruction-set processor (ASIP) , a graphics processing unit (GPU) , a physics processing unit (PPU) , a digital signal processor (DSP) , a field programmable gate array (FPGA) , a programmable logic device (PLD) , a controller, a microcontroller unit, a reduced instruction-set computer (RISC) , a microprocessor, or the like, or any combination thereof.

The network 120 may facilitate exchange of information and/or data. In some embodiments, one or more components of the online to offline service system 100 (e.g., the server 110, the requester terminal 130, the provider terminal 140, the storage device 150 and/or the positioning system 160) may transmit information and/or data to other component (s) of the online to offline service system 100 via the network 120. For example, the server 110 may obtain a service request from the requester terminal 130 via the network 120. In some embodiments, the network 120 may be any type of wired or wireless network, or any combination thereof. Merely by way of example, the network 120 may include a cable network, a wireline network, an optical fiber network, a telecommunications network, an intranet, an Internet, a local area network (LAN) , a wide area network (WAN) , a wireless local area network (WLAN) , a metropolitan area network (MAN) , a public telephone switched network (PSTN) , a Bluetooth network, a ZigBee network, a near field communication (NFC) network, or the like, or any combination thereof. In some embodiments, the network 120 may include one or more network access points. For example, the network 120 may include wired or wireless network access points such as base stations and/or internet exchange points 120-1, 120-2, …, through which one or more components of the online to offline service system 100 may be connected to the network 120 to exchange data and/or information.

In some embodiments, a service requester may be a user of the requester terminal 130. In some embodiments, the user of the requester terminal 130 may be someone other than the service requester. For example, a user A of the requester terminal 130 may use the requester terminal 130 to send a service request for a user B or receive a service confirmation and/or information or instructions from the server 110. In some embodiments, a service provider may be a user of the provider terminal 140. In some embodiments, the user of the provider terminal 140 may be someone other than the service provider. For example, a user C of the provider terminal 140 may use the provider terminal 140 to receive a service request for a user D, and/or information or instructions from the server 110.

In some embodiments, the requester terminal 130 may include a mobile device 130-1, a tablet computer 130-2, a laptop computer 130-3, a built-in device in a vehicle 130-4, or the like, or any combination thereof. In some embodiments, the mobile device 130-1 may include a smart home device, a wearable device, a smart mobile device, a virtual reality device, an augmented reality device, or the like, or any combination thereof. In some embodiments, the smart home device may include a smart lighting device, a control device of an intelligent electrical apparatus, a smart monitoring device, a smart television, a smart video camera, an interphone, or the like, or any combination thereof. In some embodiments, the wearable device may include a smart bracelet, a smart footgear, a smart glass, a smart helmet, a smart watch, a smart clothing, a smart backpack, a smart accessory, or the like, or any combination thereof. In some embodiments, the smart mobile device may include a smartphone, a personal digital assistance (PDA) , a gaming device, a navigation device, a point of sale (POS) device, or the like, or any combination thereof. In some embodiments, the virtual reality device and/or the augmented reality device may include a virtual reality helmet, a virtual reality glass, a virtual reality patch, an augmented reality helmet, an augmented reality glass, an augmented reality patch, or the like, or any combination thereof. For example, the virtual reality device and/or the augmented reality device may include a Google Glass ^TM, an Oculus Rift ^TM, a Hololens ^TM, a Gear VR ^TM, etc. In some embodiments, a built-in device in the vehicle 130-4 may include an onboard computer, an onboard television, etc. In some embodiments, the requester terminal 130 may be a device with positioning technology for locating the location of the service requester and/or the requester terminal 130.

In some embodiments, the provider terminal 140 may be similar to, or the same device as the requester terminal 130. In some embodiments, the provider terminal 140 may be a device with positioning technology for locating the location of the service provider and/or the provider terminal 140. In some embodiments, the requester terminal 130 and/or the provider terminal 140 may communicate with other positioning device to determine the location of the service requester, the requester terminal 130, the service provider, and/or the provider terminal 140. In some embodiments, the requester terminal 130 and/or the provider terminal 140 may send positioning information to the server 110.

The storage device 150 may store data and/or instructions relating to a service request. In some embodiments, the storage device 150 may store data obtained from the requester terminal 130 and/or the provider terminal 140. For example, the storage device 150 may store a service request obtained from the requester terminal 130. In some embodiments, the storage device 150 may store data and/or instructions that the server 110 may execute or use to perform exemplary methods described in the present disclosure. For example, the storage device 150 may store data and/or instructions for dividing a target region into a plurality of sub-regions by clustering a plurality of target unit regions in the target region into a plurality of groups. In some embodiments, the storage device 150 may store location information related to the requester terminal 130 and/or the provider terminal 140. In some embodiments, the storage device 150 may include a mass storage, a removable storage, a volatile read-and-write memory, a read-only memory (ROM) , or the like, or any combination thereof. Exemplary mass storage may include a magnetic disk, an optical disk, a solid-state drive, etc. Exemplary removable storage may include a flash drive, a floppy disk, an optical disk, a memory card, a zip disk, a magnetic tape, etc. Exemplary volatile read-and-write memory may include a random access memory (RAM) . Exemplary RAM may include a dynamic RAM (DRAM) , a double date rate synchronous dynamic RAM (DDR SDRAM) , a static RAM (SRAM) , a thyristor RAM (T-RAM) , and a zero-capacitor RAM (Z-RAM) , etc. Exemplary ROM may include a mask ROM (MROM) , a programmable ROM (PROM) , an erasable programmable ROM (EPROM) , an electrically erasable programmable ROM (EEPROM) , a compact disk ROM (CD-ROM) , and a digital versatile disk ROM, etc. In some embodiments, the storage device 150 may be implemented on a cloud platform. Merely by way of example, the cloud platform may include a private cloud, a public cloud, a hybrid cloud, a community cloud, a distributed cloud, an inter-cloud, a multi-cloud, or the like, or any combination thereof.

In some embodiments, the storage device 150 may be connected to the network 120 to communicate with one or more components of the online to offline service system 100 (e.g., the server 110, the requester terminal 130, the provider terminal 140, and/or the positioning system 160) . One or more components of the online to offline service system 100 may access the data and/or instructions stored in the storage device 150 via the network 120. In some embodiments, the storage device 150 may be directly connected to or communicate with one or more components of the online to offline service system 100 (e.g., the server 110, the requester terminal 130, the provider terminal 140, and/or the positioning system 160) . In some embodiments, the storage device 150 may be part of the server 110.

In some embodiments, one or more components of the online to offline service system 100 (e.g., the server 110, the requester terminal 130, the provider terminal 140) may have permissions to access the storage device 150. In some embodiments, one or more components of the online to offline service system 100 may read and/or modify information relating to the service requester, the service provider, and/or the public when one or more conditions are met. For example, the server 110 may read and/or modify one or more service requesters’information after a service is completed. As another example, the provider terminal 140 may access information relating to the service requester when receiving a service request from the requester terminal 130, but the provider terminal 140 may not modify the relevant information of the service requester.

The positioning system 160 may determine location information associated with an object, for example, the requester terminal 130 and/or the provider terminal 140. In some embodiments, the positioning system 160 may be a global positioning system (GPS) , a global navigation satellite system (GLONASS) , a compass navigation system (COMPASS) , a BeiDou navigation satellite system, a Galileo positioning system, a quasi-zenith satellite system (QZSS) , etc. The information may include a location, an elevation, a velocity, or an acceleration of the object, an accumulative mileage number, or a current time. The location may be in the form of coordinates, such as, latitude coordinate and longitude coordinate, etc. The positioning system 160 may include one or more satellites, for example, a satellite 160-1, a satellite 160-2, and a satellite 160-3. The satellites 160-1 through 160-3 may determine the information mentioned above independently or jointly. The satellite positioning system 160 may send the information mentioned above to the network 120, the requester terminal 130, or the provider terminal 140 via wireless connections.

In some embodiments, information exchanging of one or more components of the online to offline service system 100 may be achieved by way of requesting a service. The object of the service may be any product. In some embodiments, the product may be a tangible product or an immaterial product. The tangible product may include food, medicine, commodity, chemical product, electrical appliance, clothing, car, housing, luxury, or the like, or any combination thereof. The immaterial product may include a servicing product, a financial product, a knowledge product, an internet product, or the like, or any combination thereof. The internet product may include an individual host product, a web product, a mobile internet product, a commercial host product, an embedded product, or the like, or any combination thereof. The mobile internet product may be used in a software of a mobile terminal, a program, a system, or the like, or any combination thereof. The mobile terminal may include a tablet computer, a laptop computer, a mobile phone, a personal digital assistance (PDA) , a smart watch, a point of sale (POS) device, an onboard computer, an onboard television, a wearable device, or the like, or any combination thereof. For example, the product may be any software and/or application used in the computer or mobile phone. The software and/or application may relate to socializing, shopping, transporting, entertainment, learning, investment, or the like, or any combination thereof. In some embodiments, the software and/or application relating to transporting may include a traveling software and/or application, a vehicle scheduling software and/or application, a mapping software and/or application, etc. In the vehicle scheduling software and/or application, the vehicle may include a horse, a carriage, a rickshaw (e.g., a wheelbarrow, a bike, a tricycle) , a car (e.g., a taxi, a bus, a private car) , a train, a subway, a vessel, an aircraft (e.g., an airplane, a helicopter, a space shuttle, a rocket, a hot-air balloon) , or the like, or any combination thereof.

One of ordinary skill in the art would understand that when an element of the online to offline service system 100 performs, the element may perform through electrical signals and/or electromagnetic signals. For example, when the server 110 processes a task, such as divide a target region, the server 110 may operate logic circuits in its processor to process such task. When the server 110 transmits data (e.g., information related to a hot region) to the provider terminal 140, a processor of the server 110 may generate electrical signals encoding the data. The processor of the server 110 may then send the electrical signals to at least one information exchange port (e.g., an output port) associated with the server 110. If the server 110 communicates with the provider terminal 140 via a wired network, the at least one information exchange port may be physically connected to a cable, which may further transmit the electrical signals to an input port (e.g., an inforamtion exchange port) of the provider terminal 140. If the server 110 communicates with the provider terminal 140 via a wireless network, the at least one information exchange port may be one or more antennas, which may convert the electrical signals to electromagnetic signals. Within an electronic device, such as the requester terminal 130, the provider terminal 140, and/or the server 110, when a processor thereof processes an instruction, sends out an instruction, and/or performs an action, the instruction and/or action is conducted via electrical signals. For example, when the processor retrieves or saves data from a storage medium (e.g., the storage device 150) , it may send out electrical signals to a read/write device of the storage medium, which may read or write structured data in the storage medium. The structured data may be transmitted to the processor in the form of electrical signals via a bus of the electronic device. Here, an electrical signal may be one electrical signal, a series of electrical signals, and/or a plurality of discrete electrical signals.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram illustrating exemplary hardware and/or software components of a computing device according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. In some embodiments, the server 110, the requester terminal 130, and/or the provider terminal 140 may be implemented on the computing device 200. For example, the processing engine 112 may be implemented on the computing device 200 and configured to perform functions of the processing engine 112 disclosed in this disclosure.

The computing device 200 may be configured to implement any component of the online to offline service system 100 as described herein. For example, the processing engine 112 may be implemented on the computing device 200, via its hardware, software program, firmware, or a combination thereof. Although only one such computer is shown, for convenience, the computer functions relating to the online to offline service as described herein may be implemented in a distributed fashion on a number of similar platforms to distribute the processing load.

As illustrated in FIG. 2, the computing device 200 may include a processor 210, a storage 220, an input/output (I/O) 230, and a communication port 240. The processor 210 (e.g., logic circuits) may execute computer instructions (e.g., program code) and perform functions of the processing engine 112 in accordance with techniques described herein. For example, the processor 210 may include interface circuits 210-a and processing circuits 210-b therein. The interface circuits may be configured to receive electronic signals from a bus (not shown in FIG. 2) , wherein the electronic signals encode structured data and/or instructions for the processing circuits to process. The processing circuits may conduct logic calculations, and then determine a conclusion, a result, and/or an instruction encoded as electronic signals. Then the interface circuits may send out the electronic signals from the processing circuits via the bus.

The computer instructions may include, for example, routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, procedures, modules, and functions, which perform particular functions described herein. For example, the processor 210 may divide a target region into a plurality of sub-regions by clustering a plurality of target unit regions in the target region into a plurality of groups. In some embodiments, the processor 210 may include one or more hardware processors, such as a microcontroller, a microprocessor, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) , an application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) , an application-specific instruction-set processor (ASIP) , a central processing unit (CPU) , a graphics processing unit (GPU) , a physics processing unit (PPU) , a microcontroller unit, a digital signal processor (DSP) , a field programmable gate array (FPGA) , an advanced RISC machine (ARM) , a programmable logic device (PLD) , any circuit or processor capable of executing one or more functions, or the like, or any combinations thereof.

Merely for illustration, only one processor is described in the computing device 200. However, it should be noted that the computing device 200 in the present disclosure may also include multiple processors, thus operations and/or method steps that are performed by one processor as described in the present disclosure may also be jointly or separately performed by the multiple processors. For example, if in the present disclosure the processor of the computing device 200 executes both step A and step B, it should be understood that step A and step B may also be performed by two or more different processors jointly or separately in the computing device 200 (e.g., a first processor executes step A and a second processor executes step B, or the first and second processors jointly execute steps A and B) .

The storage 220 may store data/information obtained from the requester terminal 130, the provider terminal 140, the storage device 150, and/or any other component of the online to offline service system 100. In some embodiments, the storage 220 may include a mass storage, a removable storage, a volatile read-and-write memory, a read-only memory (ROM) , or the like, or any combination thereof. For example, the mass storage may include a magnetic disk, an optical disk, a solid-state drives, etc. The removable storage may include a flash drive, a floppy disk, an optical disk, a memory card, a zip disk, a magnetic tape, etc. The volatile read-and-write memory may include a random access memory (RAM) . The RAM may include a dynamic RAM (DRAM) , a double date rate synchronous dynamic RAM (DDR SDRAM) , a static RAM (SRAM) , a thyristor RAM (T-RAM) , and a zero-capacitor RAM (Z-RAM) , etc. The ROM may include a mask ROM (MROM) , a programmable ROM (PROM) , an erasable programmable ROM (EPROM) , an electrically erasable programmable ROM (EEPROM) , a compact disk ROM (CD-ROM) , and a digital versatile disk ROM, etc. In some embodiments, the storage 220 may store one or more programs and/or instructions to perform exemplary methods described in the present disclosure. For example, the storage 220 may store a program for the processing engine 112 for dividing a target region into a plurality of sub-regions by clustering a plurality of target unit regions in the target region into a plurality of groups.

The I/O 230 may input and/or output signals, data, information, etc. In some embodiments, the I/O 230 may enable a user interaction with the processing engine 112. In some embodiments, the I/O 230 may include an input device and an output device. Examples of the input device may include a keyboard, a mouse, a touch screen, a microphone, or the like, or a combination thereof. Examples of the output device may include a display device, a loudspeaker, a printer, a projector, or the like, or a combination thereof. Examples of the display device may include a liquid crystal display (LCD) , a light-emitting diode (LED) -based display, a flat panel display, a curved screen, a television device, a cathode ray tube (CRT) , a touch screen, or the like, or a combination thereof.

The communication port 240 may be connected to a network (e.g., the network 120) to facilitate data communications. The communication port 240 may establish connections between the processing engine 112 and the requester terminal 130, the provider terminal 140, the positioning system 160, or the storage device 150. The connection may be a wired connection, a wireless connection, any other communication connection that can enable data transmission and/or reception, and/or any combination of these connections. The wired connection may include, for example, an electrical cable, an optical cable, a telephone wire, or the like, or any combination thereof. The wireless connection may include, for example, a Bluetooth ^TM link, a Wi-Fi ^TM link, a WiMax ^TM link, a WLAN link, a ZigBee link, a mobile network link (e.g., 3G, 4G, 5G, etc. ) , or the like, or a combination thereof. In some embodiments, the communication port 240 may be and/or include a standardized communication port, such as RS232, RS485, etc.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram illustrating exemplary hardware and/or software components of a mobile device on which the requester terminal 130 and/or the provider terminal 140 may be implemented according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. As illustrated in FIG. 3, the mobile device 300 may include a communication platform 310, a display 320, a graphic processing unit (GPU) 330, a central processing unit (CPU) 340, an I/O 350, a memory 360, a mobile operating system (OS) 370, and a storage 390. In some embodiments, any other suitable component, including but not limited to a system bus or a controller (not shown) , may also be included in the mobile device 300.

In some embodiments, the mobile operating system 370 (e.g., iOS ^TM, Android ^TM, Windows Phone ^TM, etc. ) and one or more applications 380 may be loaded into the memory 360 from the storage 390 in order to be executed by the CPU 340. The applications 380 may include a browser or any other suitable mobile apps for receiving and rendering information relating to online to offline services or other information from the online to offline service system 100. User interactions with the information stream may be achieved via the I/O 350 and provided to the processing engine 112 and/or other components of the online to offline service system 100 via the network 120.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary processing engine according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. In some embodiments, the processing engine 112 shown in FIG. 4 may be implemented on the server 110 of the online to offline service system 100 shown in FIG. 1. As illustrated in FIG. 4, the processing engine 112 may include a first region division module 410 and/or a second region division module 420.

The first region division module 410 may be configured to divide a target region into a plurality of sub-region based on a plurality of target unit regions and parameters associated with the plurality of target unit regions. The first region division module 410 may include a first obtaining unit 411, a second obtaining unit 413, a clustering unit 415, and a division unit 417.

The first obtaining unit 411 may be configured to obtain positioning information of a plurality of target unit regions in a target region to generate a first data set.

In some embodiments, the target region may be a region to be divided into a plurality of sub-regions. The target region may be any geographic region, such as an administrative region (e.g. a country, a province, a city, or a district) . The target region may also be an artificially defined region based on service data collected from an online to offline service. There may be a number of target regions, each of which may have a same size, population, number of orders in a specific time period, value created for the online to offline service in a specific time period, etc.

In some embodiments, the target region may be divided, offline or online, into a plurality of unit regions that are bordering each other (i.e., without any gap) by the first obtaining unit 411. Information related to the plurality of unit regions in the target region may be stored in a storage medium (e.g., the storage device 150, the storage 220) . In some embodiments, the shape of the unit region may be circle, ellipse, polygon (e.g., triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon) , arch, or the like. The shapes and/or sizes of the plurality of unit regions may be same or different. It should be noted that the above description about determining the unit regions is merely provided for the purposes of illustration, and not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure.

In some embodiments, the target unit regions may be determined, online or offline, based on the plurality of unit regions by the first obtaining unit 411. Information related to the target unit regions may be stored in a storage medium (e.g., the storage device 150, the storage 220) .

In some embodiments, the first obtaining unit 411 may determine all of the plurality of unit regions as the target unit regions. In some embodiments, the first obtaining unit 411 may select a portion of the plurality of unit regions as the target unit regions according to one or more preset condition. For example, the first obtaining unit 411 may determine a historical parameter related to each unit region in a prior time period (e.g., a time period prior to the current time) (e.g., last week, last month, or last year) , and determine the unit region, related to which the historical parameter is greater than a value threshold, as the target unit region.

In some embodiments, the parameter related to a unit region may be associated with an online to offline service (e.g., an online taxi-hailing service) . For example, the parameter related to a unit region may include resource supply (e.g., the number of service providers) related to the online to offline service, resource demand (e.g., the number of service requests) related to the online to offline service, or a difference between the resource supply and the resource demand (e.g., a difference between the number of service providers and the number of service requests) in the unit region, or the like, or any combination thereof. The historical parameter related to a unit region may refer to the parameter related to the unit region in a prior time period. For example, the first obtaining unit 411 may determine a unit region, related to which the number of service requests in last week is greater than the value threshold, as a target unit region.

In some embodiments, the value thresholds for different unit regions may be different. In some embodiments, the plurality of unit regions may share a common value threshold. For example, the processing engine 112 may determine a first ratio and a sum of the historical parameters of the plurality of unit regions. The processing engine 112 may determine the common value threshold by multiplying the sum of the historical parameters with the first radio. Merely by way of example, the target region is divided into 100 unit regions. The processing engine 112 may set the first radio as 2%and determine that the sum of the number of service requests initiated in the plurality of unit regions (e.g., departure locations associated with the service requests are located in the plurality of unit regions) last month is 1000. The processing engine 112 may determine the common value threshold as 20 (i.e., 1000×2%=20) .

As another example, the processing engine 112 may determine a second ratio and a sum of the historical parameters of the plurality of unit regions. The processing engine 112 may determine a reference value by multiplying the sum of the historical parameters with the second radio. The processing engine 112 may rank the plurality of unit regions in descending order based on the historical parameters of the plurality of unit regions. The processing engine 112 may select a unit region N so as to the sum of the historical parameters related to the unit regions ranking before unit region N is equal or approximately equal (e.g., a difference between the sum and the reference value is less than a preset value, such as 5) to the reference value. The processing engine 112 may designate the historical parameter of unit region N as the common value threshold. Merely by way of example, the target region is divided into 100 unit regions. The processing engine 112 may set the second radio as 90%and determine that the sum of the number of service requests initiated in the plurality of unit regions last month is 1000. The processing engine 112 may determine the reference value as 900 (i.e., 1000×90%=900) . The processing engine 112 may rank the plurality of unit regions in descending order based on the number of service requests related to each unit region in last month. The processing engine 112 may select a unit region N so as to the sum of the number of service requests of the unit regions ranking before unit region N is equal to or close to 900. If the number of service requests in unit region N in last month is 30, the processing engine 112 may determine the common value threshold as 30. It should be noted that the process for determining the value threshold described above is merely provided for the purposes of illustration, and not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure.

In some embodiments, if the target unit regions are determined in advance, during the process for dividing the target region into a plurality of sub-regions, the first obtaining unit 411 may obtain the positioning information of the target unit regions from a storage medium (e.g., the storage device 150, the storage 220) to generate the first data set.

The second obtaining unit 413 may be configured to obtain a parameter, associated with a predetermined time period, for each of the plurality of target unit regions to generate a second data set. The second data set may include the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions in the predetermined time period. The parameter associated with a predetermined time period for a target unit region may be a historical parameter related to the target unit region in a prior time period (e.g., a time period prior to the current time) or a predictive parameter related to the target unit region in a future time period (e.g., a time period after the current time) .

Merely by way of example, one day may be divided into a plurality of unit periods. The duration of each unit period may be same or different. For example, the duration of each unit period may be 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or 15 minutes. As another example, the duration of a first unit period may be 5 minutes, and the duration of a second unit period may be 10 minutes. In some embodiments, the second obtaining unit 413 may designate a unique identifier for each unit period to distinguish the unit periods from on another. For example, the predetermined time period may be a unit period including the current time, a unit period prior to the current time, or a unit period after the current time.

In some embodiments, if the predetermined time period is a future time period, the second obtaining unit 413 may estimate the predictive parameters of the plurality of target unit regions using machine learning technology, and/or based on the historical parameters of the plurality of target unit regions in a prior time period. Merely by way of example, the second obtaining unit 413 may estimate the number of service requests initiated in each of the plurality of target unit regions in the next 10 minutes. It should be noted that the process for estimating the predictive parameters of the plurality of target unit regions described above is merely provided for the purposes of illustration, and not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure.

The clustering unit 415 may be configured to cluster the target unit regions into a plurality of groups based on the first data set and the second data set. Each group may include one or more target unit regions. In some embodiments, for a group including two or more target unit regions, differences between the parameters of any two of the two or more target unit regions are equal to or less than a parameter threshold, and the two or more target unit regions in the group may form a continuous region. For example, one of the plurality of groups may include three target unit regions, such as target unit region A, target unit region B, and target unit region C. The parameters of the three target unit regions may be a, b, and c, respectively. The differences (e.g., |a-b|, |a-c|, and |b-c|) between the parameters of any two of the three target unit regions are equal to or less than the parameter threshold, and the three target unit regions in the group may form a continuous region. It should be noted that the parameter threshold can be any reasonable value; it can be set according to experience (i.e. past data) . The current disclosure does not limit the specific process and specific value for setting the parameter threshold.

In some embodiments, the clustering unit 415 may include a first selection sub-unit and a second selection sub-unit (not shown in FIG. 4) .

The first selection sub-unit may be configured to determine a start unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered based on the second data set. The parameter of the start unit region may be maximum or minimum among the target unit regions to be clustered.

The second selection sub-unit may be configured to determine a group including the start unit region.

In some embodiments, the second selection sub-unit may be configured to determine the start unit region as a reference region. The second selection sub-unit may be also configured to perform a selection operation by selecting a pending unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered based on the first data set and the second data set. In some embodiments, the second selection sub-unit may determine the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region based on the positioning information of the plurality of target unit regions in the first data set, and select the pending unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions in the second data set. The parameter of the pending unit region may be maximum or minimum among the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region. The second selection sub-unit may be also configured to determine whether a termination condition is met. In response to a determination that the termination condition is met, the second selection sub-unit may determine whether there is any target unit region to be clustered. In response to a determination that there is no target unit region to be clustered, the second selection sub-unit may proceed to 718, in which the division unit 417 may divide the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on a clustering result (e.g., a plurality of groups of target unit regions) . In response to a determination that there is at least one target unit region to be clustered, the clustering unit 415 may determine a new group of target unit regions. In response to a determination that the termination condition is not met, the second selection sub-unit may determine an updated reference region by adding the pending unit region to the reference region. Then the second selection sub-unit may repeat the selection operation based on the updated reference region.

The division unit 417 may be configured to divide the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups. In some embodiments, the division unit 417 may determine one of the plurality of groups that includes one target unit region as a first group, and determine one of the plurality of groups that includes more than one target unit region as a second group. For the first group, the division unit 417 may determine the target unit region included in the first group as a sub-region. For the second group, the division unit 417 may combine the two or more target unit regions included in the second group into a single region and determine the single region as a sub-region.

In some embodiments, the division unit 417 may also configured to determine a strategy associated with the parameter for at least one of the plurality of sub-regions. For example, the division unit 417 may designate the sub-region in which the resource supply is relatively low and/or the resource demand is relatively high as a hot region. The division unit 417 may designate the sub-region in which the resource supply is relatively high and/or the resource demand is relatively low as a non-hot region. The division unit 417 may generate a strategy for the hot region to increase the resource supply in the hot region and generate a strategy for the non-hot region to increase the resource demand and/or decrease the resource supply in the non-hot region.

The second region division module 420 may be configured to determine at least one hot region in a target region. The second region division module 420 may include an acquisition unit 421, a determination unit 423, and a judgement unit 425.

The acquisition unit 421 may be configured to obtain a plurality of service requests, each of which includes a departure location in a target region.

The determination unit 423 may be configured to determine, in the target region, a plurality of sub-regions corresponding to the departure locations, and determine a number of the service requests of which the departure locations are located in each of the plurality of sub-regions.

In some embodiments, the determination unit 423 may determine a plurality of target unit regions in the target region according to the departure locations of the plurality of service requests. Each of the plurality of target unit regions may include at least one departure location. The determination unit 423 may combine the plurality of target unit regions into a plurality of sub-regions. The distances between any two of the sub-regions may be greater than the distance threshold.

In some embodiments, the determination unit 423 may determine the target unit regions based on the following operations. The target region may be divided, online or offline, into a plurality of unit regions (e.g., grid regions) by the determination unit 423. Each unit region may be represented by longitude and latitude coordinates. For example, a unit region may be represented by longitude and latitude coordinates of the center point of the unit region.

For each of the departure locations, the determination unit 423 may determine one of the plurality of unit regions that includes the departure location. The determination unit 423 may designate the unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations as the target unit regions. Since the number of digits after the decimal point of the longitude and latitude coordinates reflect the size of a region the coordinates represent, this feature can be used to determine the target unit region. For example, the determination unit 423 may process the longitude and/or latitude coordinates of the departure locations or the unit regions to make the number of digits after the decimal point of the longitude and/or latitude coordinates of the departure locations and the unit regions equal. The determination unit 423 may process the longitude and/or latitude coordinates of which the number of digits after the decimal point is relatively large. For example, if the number of digits after the decimal point of the longitude and/or latitude coordinates of the unit regions is 3, and the number of digits after the decimal point of the longitude and/or latitude coordinates of the departure locations is 4, the determination unit 423 may process the longitude and/or latitude coordinates of the departure locations to obtain processed longitude and/or latitude coordinates of which the number of digits after the decimal point is 3. The determination unit 423 may determine the unit region of which the longitude and latitude coordinates are equal to the processed longitude and/or latitude coordinates of the departure location as a target unit region.

In some embodiments, the determination unit 423 may determine the target unit regions based on the following operations. The determination unit 423 may process the longitude and latitude coordinates of the departure locations to make an equal number of digits after a decimal point of the longitude and latitude coordinates of the departure locations. The determination unit 423 may determine the target unit regions based on the processed longitude and latitude coordinates of the departure locations. Each of the target unit regions may include the departure locations with an equal processed longitude and latitude coordinates.

In some embodiments, when combining the target unit regions into the plurality of sub-regions, the determination unit 423 may determine a target unit region as a reference region. The determination unit 423 may determine the number of the service requests of which the departure locations are located in each of the remaining of target unit regions and rank the remaining of target unit regions based on the number of the service requests. The determination unit 423 may determine, starting from the target unit region with a maximum or minimum number of the service requests in the remaining of target unit regions, distances between the reference region and the remaining of target unit regions based on the ranking result. In some embodiments, the distance between two target unit regions may be equal to the distance between the longitude and latitude coordinates of the departure locations in the two target unit regions. The determination unit 423 may combine the reference region with the remaining of target unit regions that is within the distance threshold from the reference region to determine a sub-region.

The judgement unit 425 may be configured to compare the number of the service requests to a request threshold. The judgement unit 425 may be also configured to designate the sub-region as a hot region in response to a comparison result that the number of the service requests is greater than the request threshold. The judgement unit 425 may be also configured to transmit one or more messages relating to the hot regions to an electronic device.

In some embodiments, the second region division module 420 may further include a designation unit 427. The designation unit 427 may be configured to automatically determine a name (or other designations such as a number) for each sub-region, which may reduce the heavy workload and cost for manual work in determining the name for each sub-region.

In some embodiments, for a target unit region, the designation unit 427 may determine the number of service requests corresponding to a same departure location. The designation unit 427 may designate the name of the departure location corresponding to which the number of service requests is largest as the name of the target unit region.

In some embodiments, for a sub-region, the designation unit 427 may determine the number of service requests in each target unit region in the sub-region. The designation unit 427 may designate the name of the target unit region in which the number of service requests is largest as the name of the sub-region, and designate the longitude and latitude coordinates related to the target unit region in which the number of service requests is largest as the longitude and latitude coordinates of the center of the sub-region.

In some embodiments, the second region division module 420 may further include a transmission unit (not shown in FIG. 4) . The transmission unit may be configured to transmit one or more messages relating to the hot regions to an electronic device (e.g., the provider terminal 140) . The one or more messages may be configured to increase a service price related to at least one hot region to attract the service providers in at least one non-hot region to the at least one hot region, transmit at least one special offer related to the online to offline service to at least one service requester in at least one non-hot region, or transmit positioning information of the hot regions to at least one service provider in the target region.

It should be noted that the above description is merely provided for the purposes of illustration, and not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure. For persons having ordinary skills in the art, multiple variations and modifications may be made under the teachings of the present disclosure. However, those variations and modifications do not depart from the scope of the present disclosure. For example, the processing engine 112 may further include a storage module (not shown in FIG. 4) . The storage module may be configured to store data generated during any process performed by any component of in the processing engine 112. As another example, each of components of the processing engine 112 may include a storage device. Additionally or alternatively, the components of the processing engine 112 may share a common storage device. As another example, the first region division module 410 or the second region division module 420 may be omitted.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary process for region division according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. In some embodiments, the process 500 may be implemented in the online to offline service system 100 illustrated in FIG. 1. For example, the process 500 may be stored in a storage medium (e.g., the storage device 150, or the storage 220 of the processing engine 112) as a form of instructions, and invoked and/or executed by the server 110 (e.g., the processing engine 112 of the server 110, the processor 220 of the processing engine 112, or one or more modules in the processing engine 112 illustrated in FIG. 4) . The operations of the illustrated process 500 presented below are intended to be illustrative. In some embodiments, the process 500 may be accomplished with one or more additional operations not described, and/or without one or more of the operations discussed. Additionally, the order in which the operations of the process 500 as illustrated in FIG. 5 and described below is not intended to be limiting.

In 510, the first obtaining unit 411 (the processing engine 112 and/or the interface circuits 210-a, or the first region division module 410) may obtain positioning information of a plurality of target unit regions in a target region to generate a first data set.

In some embodiments, the target region may be divided, offline or online, into a plurality of unit regions that are bordering each other (i.e., without any gap) by the server 110 (e.g., the first obtaining unit 411) , the requester terminal 130, the provider terminal 140, or an external device communicated with the online to offline service system 100. Information related to the plurality of unit regions in the target region may be stored in a storage medium (e.g., the storage device 150, the storage 220) . In some embodiments, the shape of the unit region may be circle, ellipse, polygon (e.g., triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon) , arch, or the like. The shapes and/or sizes of the plurality of unit regions may be same or different. It should be noted that the above description about determining the unit regions is merely provided for the purposes of illustration, and not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure.

In some embodiments, the target unit regions may be determined, online or offline, based on the plurality of unit regions by the server 110 (e.g., the first obtaining unit 411) , the requester terminal 130, the provider terminal 140, or an external device in communication with the online to offline service system 100. Information related to the target unit regions may be stored in a storage medium (e.g., the storage device 150, the storage 220) .

For brevity, the process for determining the target unit regions performed by the server 110 (e.g., the processing engine 112) may be taken as an example. It should be noted that the process for determining the target unit regions described below are merely some examples or implementations. For persons having ordinary skills in the art, the process for determining the target unit regions may be performed by other devices, such as the requester terminal 130, the provider terminal 140, or an external device communicated with the online to offline service system 100.

In 520, the second obtaining unit 413 (the processing engine 112 and/or the interface circuits 210-a, or the first region division module 410) may obtain a parameter, associated with a predetermined time period, for each of the plurality of target unit regions to generate a second data set. The second data set may include the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions in the predetermined time period. The parameter associated with a predetermined time period for a target unit region may be a historical parameter related to the target unit region in a prior time period (e.g., a time period prior to the current time) or a predictive parameter related to the target unit region in a future time period (e.g., a time period after the current time) .

In 530, the clustering unit 415 (the processing engine 112 and/or the processing circuits 210-b, or the first region division module 410) may cluster the target unit regions into a plurality of groups based on the first data set and the second data set. Each group may include one or more target unit regions. In some embodiments, for a group including two or more target unit regions, differences between the parameters of any two of the two or more target unit regions are equal to or less than a parameter threshold, and the two or more target unit regions in the group may form a continuous region. For example, one of the plurality of groups may include three target unit regions, such as target unit region A, target unit region B, and target unit region C. The parameters of the three target unit regions may be a, b, and c, respectively. The differences (e.g., |a-b|, |a-c|, and |b-c|) between the parameters of any two of the three target unit regions are equal to or less than the parameter threshold, and the three target unit regions in the group may form a continuous region. It should be noted that the parameter threshold can be any reasonable value; it can be set according to experience (i.e. past data) . The current disclosure does not limit the specific process and specific value for setting the parameter threshold. Details regarding the process for clustering the target unit regions may be found elsewhere in the present disclosure (e.g., the description in connection with operations 706-716 in FIG. 7) .

In 540, the division unit 417 (the processing engine 112 and/or the processing circuits 210-b, or the first region division module 410) may divide the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups. In some embodiments, the division unit 417 may determine one of the plurality of groups that includes one target unit region as a first group, and determine one of the plurality of groups that includes more than one target unit region as a second group. For the first group, the division unit 417 may determine the target unit region included in the first group as a sub-region. For the second group, the division unit 417 may combine the two or more target unit regions included in the second group into a single region and determine the single region as a sub-region.

Merely by way of example, as shown in FIG. 6, the first group may include a target unit region 601. The second group may include

target unit regions

602, 603, and 604. The division unit 417 may determine target unit region 601 as a sub-region 605. The division unit 417 may combine

target unit regions

602, 603, and 604 into a single region and determine the single region as a sub-region 606.

In some embodiments, the first region division module 410 may determine a strategy associated with the parameter for at least one of the plurality of sub-regions. For example, the first region division module 410 may designate the sub-region in which the resource supply is relatively low and/or the resource demand is relatively high as a hot region. The first region division module 410 may designate the sub-region in which the resource supply is relatively high and/or the resource demand is relatively low as a non-hot region. The first region division module 410 may generate a strategy for the hot region to increase the resource supply in the hot region and generate a strategy for the non-hot region to increase the resource demand and/or decrease the resource supply in the non-hot region.

For example, if the target region is divided into a plurality of sub-regions based on the parameter that is the number of service requests for each of the sub-regions, the first region division module 410 may determine whether the number of service requests initiated in the sub-region in a future time period (e.g., the next 10 minutes) is greater than a first preset number. In response to a determination that the number of service requests initiated in the sub-region in the future time period is greater than the first preset number, the first region division module 410 may determine the sub-region as a hot region. In response to a determination that the number of service requests initiated in the sub-region in the future time period is less than or equal to the first preset number, the first region division module 410 may determine the sub-region as a non-hot region. The first region division module 410 may transmit one or more special offers (e.g., electronic coupons) to terminals (e.g., the requester terminal 130) associated with service requesters in the non-hot region to stimulate the service requesters to initiate more service requests in the non-hot region. Alternatively or additionally, the first region division module 410 may transmit a message indicating which sub-regions are the hot regions or the non-hot regions and the positioning information of the hot regions and/or the non-hot regions to terminals (e.g., the provider terminal 140) associated with the service providers in the target region (or only the non-hot regions in the target region) , and direct the terminals to display the positioning information of the hot regions and/or the non-hot regions. The service providers may make their own decisions about whether to go to the hot regions based on the displayed hot regions and/or non-hot regions. Alternatively or additionally, the first region division module 410 may increase the service price (e.g., the price a service requester need to pay for a service request) in the hot regions to attract the service providers located in the non-hot regions to the hot regions. If a service provider decides to go the hot regions (or one of the hot regions) , he/she may send a message (e.g. as response to the message from the server) to inform the platform that he/she will be heading the hot regions. By receiving the message from the service provider, the server may predict the supply/demand dynamics in the target region.

As another example, if the target region is divided into a plurality of sub-regions based on the parameter that is the number of service providers, for each of the sub-regions, the first region division module 410 may determine whether the number of service providers in the sub-region in a future time period (e.g., the next 10 minutes) is greater than a second preset number. In response to a determination that the number of service providers in the sub-region in the future time period is greater than the second preset number, the first region division module 410 may determine the sub-region as a non-hot region. In response to a determination that the number of service providers in the sub-region in the future time period is less than or equal to the second preset number, the first region division module 410 may determine the sub-region as a hot region. The first region division module 410 may transmit one or more special offers (e.g., electronic coupons) to terminals (e.g., the requester terminal 130) associated with service requesters in the non-hot region to stimulate the service requesters to initiate more service requests in the non-hot region. Alternatively or additionally, the first region division module 410 may transmit a message indicating which sub-regions are the hot regions or the non-hot regions and the positioning information of the hot regions and/or the non-hot regions to terminals (e.g., the provider terminal 140) associated with the service providers in the target region (or only the non-hot regions in the target region) , and direct the terminals to display the positioning information of the hot regions and/or the non-hot regions. The service providers may make their own decisions about whether to go to the hot regions based on the displayed hot regions and/or non-hot regions. Alternatively or additionally, the first region division module 410 may increase the service price (e.g., the price a service requester need to pay for a service request) in the hot regions to attract the service providers located in the non-hot regions to the hot regions. If a service provider decides to go the hot regions (or one of the hot regions) , he/she may send a message (e.g. as response to the message from the server) to inform the platform that he/she will be heading the hot regions. By receiving the message from the service provider, the server may predict the supply/demand dynamics in the target region.

As still another example, if the target region is divided into a plurality of sub-regions based on the parameter that is the difference between the number of service providers and service requests, for each of the sub-regions, the first region division module 410 may determine whether the difference of subtracting the number of service providers from the number of service requests in the sub-region in a future time period (e.g., the next 10 minutes) is greater than a predetermined value. In response to a determination that the difference in the sub-region in the future time period is greater than the predetermined value, the first region division module 410 may determine the sub-region as a hot region. In response to a determination that the difference in the sub-region in the future time period is less than or equal to the predetermined value, the first region division module 410 may determine the sub-region as a non-hot region. The first region division module 410 may transmit one or more special offers (e.g., electronic coupons) to terminals (e.g., the requester terminal 130) associated with service requesters in the non-hot region to stimulate the service requesters to initiate more service requests in the non-hot region. Alternatively or additionally, the first region division module 410 may transmit a message indicating which sub-regions are the hot regions or the non-hot regions and the positioning information of the hot regions and/or the non-hot regions to terminals (e.g., the provider terminal 140) associated with the service providers in the target region (or only the non-hot regions in the target region) , and direct the terminals to display the positioning information of the hot regions and/or the non-hot regions. The service providers may make their own decisions about whether to go to the hot regions based on the displayed hot regions and/or non-hot regions. Alternatively or additionally, the first region division module 410 may increase the service price (e.g., the price a service requester need to pay for a service request) in the hot regions to attract the service providers located in the non-hot regions to the hot regions. If a service provider decides to go the hot regions (or one of the hot regions) , he/she may send a message (e.g. as response to the message from the server) to inform the platform that he/she will be heading the hot regions. By receiving the message from the service provider, the server may predict the supply/demand dynamics in the target region.

It should be noted that the above description is merely provided for the purposes of illustration, and not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure. For persons having ordinary skills in the art, multiple variations and modifications may be made under the teachings of the present disclosure. However, those variations and modifications do not depart from the scope of the present disclosure. For example, the process 500 may be implemented on a mobile device (e.g., the requester terminal 130 in FIG. 1, the provider device 140 in FIG. 1, or the mobile device 300 in FIG. 3) .

FIG. 7 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary process for region division according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. In some embodiments, the process 700 may be implemented in the online to offline service system 100 illustrated in FIG. 1. For example, the process 800 may be stored in a storage medium (e.g., the storage device 150, or the storage 220 of the processing engine 112) as a form of instructions, and invoked and/or executed by the server 110 (e.g., the processing engine 112 of the server 110, the processor 220 of the processing engine 112, or one or more modules in the processing engine 112 illustrated in FIG. 4) . The operations of the illustrated process 700 presented below are intended to be illustrative. In some embodiments, the process 700 may be accomplished with one or more additional operations not described, and/or without one or more of the operations discussed. Additionally, the order in which the operations of the process 700 as illustrated in FIG. 7 and described below is not intended to be limiting.

In 702, the first obtaining unit 411 (the processing engine 112 and/or the interface circuits 210-a, or the first region division module 410) may obtain positioning information of a plurality of target unit regions in a target region to generate a first data set. Details regarding the generation of the first data set may be found elsewhere in the present disclosure (e.g., the description in connection with operation 510 in FIG. 5) .

In 704, the second obtaining unit 413 (the processing engine 112 and/or the interface circuits 210-a, or the first region division module 410) may obtain a parameter, associated with a predetermined time period, for each of the plurality of target unit regions to generate a second data set. Details regarding the generation of the second data set may be found elsewhere in the present disclosure (e.g., the description in connection with operation 520 in FIG. 5) .

In some embodiments, to cluster the plurality of target unit regions into a plurality of groups, the clustering unit 415 (the processing engine 112 and/or the processing circuits 210-b, or the first region division module 410) may repeat operations 706-716 until all the target unit regions are clustered.

In 706, the clustering unit 415 (the processing engine 112 and/or the processing circuits 210-b, or the first region division module 410) may determine a start unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered based on the second data set. The parameter of the start unit region may be maximum or minimum among the target unit regions to be clustered.

In 708, the clustering unit 415 (the processing engine 112 and/or the processing circuits 210-b, or the first region division module 410) may determine the start unit region as a reference region.

In 710, the clustering unit 415 (the processing engine 112 and/or the processing circuits 210-b, or the first region division module 410) may select a pending unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered based on the first data set and the second data set. In some embodiments, the clustering unit 415 may determine the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region based on the positioning information of the plurality of target unit regions in the first data set, and select the pending unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions in the second data set. The parameter of the pending unit region may be maximum or minimum among the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region.

In 712, the clustering unit 415 (the processing engine 112 and/or the processing circuits 210-b, or the first region division module 410) may determine whether a termination condition is met. In response to a determination that the termination condition is met, the process 700 may proceed to 716. In response to a determination that the termination condition is not met, the process 700 may proceed to 714 to determine an updated reference region by adding the pending unit region to the reference region. Then the clustering unit 415 may repeat operations 710-712 based on the updated reference region.

For example, the clustering unit 415 may determine whether the difference between the parameters of the pending unit region and the start unit region is greater than a parameter threshold. In response to a determination that the difference between the parameters is equal to or less than the parameter threshold, which indicates that the termination condition is not met, the process 700 may proceed to 714 to determine an updated reference region by adding the pending unit region to the reference region. Then the clustering unit 415 may repeat operations 710-712 based on the updated reference region. In response to a determination that the difference between the parameters is greater than the parameter threshold, which indicates that the termination condition is met, the process 700 may proceed to 716.

As another example, the clustering unit 415 may determine whether the difference between the parameters of the pending unit region and the start unit region is greater than the parameter threshold and whether a number of times of performing operations 710-712 is equal to a number threshold (e.g., 5, 10, 15, 20, 50) . In response to a determination that the difference between the parameters is equal to or less than the parameter threshold and a determination that the number of times of performing operations 710-712 in the process for determining a group of target unit regions is less than the number threshold, which indicates that the termination condition is met, the process 700 may proceed to 714 to determine an updated reference region by adding the pending unit region to the reference region. Then the clustering unit 415 may repeat operations 710-712 based on the updated reference region. In response to a determination that the difference between the parameters is greater than the parameter threshold or a determination that the number of times of performing operations 710-712 is equal to the number threshold, which indicates that the termination condition is not met, the process 700 may proceed to 716.

In 716, the clustering unit 415 (the processing engine 112 and/or the processing circuits 210-b, or the first region division module 410) may determine whether there is any target unit region to be clustered. In response to a determination that there is no target unit region to be clustered, the process 700 may proceed to 718, in which the division unit 417 (the processing engine 112 and/or the processing circuits 210-b, or the first region division module 410) may divide the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on a clustering result (e.g., a plurality of groups of target unit regions) . Details regarding the division of the target region may be found elsewhere in the present disclosure (e.g., the description in connection with operation 540 in FIG. 5) . In response to a determination that there is at least one target unit region to be clustered, the clustering unit 415 may repeat operations 706-716 to determine a new group of target unit regions.

It should be noted that the above description is merely provided for the purposes of illustration, and not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure. For persons having ordinary skills in the art, multiple variations or modifications may be made under the teachings of the present disclosure. However, those variations and modifications do not depart from the scope of the present disclosure. For example, the process 700 may be implemented on a mobile device (e.g., the requester terminal 130 in FIG. 1, the provider device 140 in FIG. 1, or the mobile device 300 in FIG. 3) .

FIG. 8 is a schematic diagram illustrating clustering a plurality of target unit regions according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. As shown in FIG. 8, each regular hexagon region may represent a unit region. The unit regions marked with numbers may be target unit regions. The number in a target unit region may represent the parameter of the target unit region in a predetermined time period. The target unit region may be represented as S _n, wherein n refers to the parameter of the target unit region in the predetermined time period. By way of example, the parameter threshold may be set as 6 and the number threshold may be set as 10.

Merely by way of example, the clustering unit 415 may cluster the target unit regions in FIG. 8 into a plurality of groups based on operations 706-716 of the process 700 in FIG. 7. The clustering unit 415 may determine a start unit region (e.g., S _19.1) with a maximum parameter from all of the target unit regions in FIG. 8. The clustering unit 415 may determine S _19.1 as a reference region. The clustering unit 415 may perform a selecting operation (e.g., operation 710 of the process 700 in FIG. 7) to determine a pending unit region (e.g., S _14.2) from the target unit regions adjacent to the reference region. The parameter of the pending unit region may be maximum among the target unit regions adjacent to the reference region. The clustering unit 415 may determine that the difference between the parameters of S _19.1 and S _14.2 is 4.9, which is less than the parameter threshold of 6, and determine that the number of times of performing the selecting operation is 1, which is less than the number threshold of 10, indicating that the terminal condition is not met. As a result, the clustering unit 415 may put S _19.1 and S _14.2 into group A and determine a first updated reference region that includes S _19.1 and S _14.2. The clustering unit 415 may repeat the selecting operation to determine a pending unit region (e.g., S _16.3) from the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the first updated reference region. The clustering unit 415 may determine that the difference between the parameters of S _19.1 and S _16.3 is 2.8, which is less than the parameter threshold of 6, and determine that the number of times of performing the selecting operation is 2, which less than the number threshold of 10, indicating that the terminal condition is not met. As a result, the clustering unit 415 may put S _16.3 into group A and determine a second updated reference region that includes S _19.1, S _14.2, and S _16.3. The clustering unit 415 may repeat the selecting operation to select a pending unit region (e.g., S _12.0) from the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the second updated reference region. The clustering unit 415 may determine that the difference between the parameters of S _19.1 and S _12.0 is 6.9, which is greater than the parameter threshold of 6, indicating that the terminal condition is met. As a result, the clustering unit 415 may determine group A including S _19.1, S _14.2, and S _16.3. S _19.1, S _14.2, and S _16.3 may be combined as a single region that is determined as a sub-region.

In some embodiments, the clustering unit 415 may repeat operations 706-716 of the process 700 in FIG. 7 to determine a new group of target unit regions. The clustering unit 415 may determine a start unit region (e.g., S _17.6) with a maximum parameter from the target unit regions to be clustered (e.g., the target unit regions other than S _19.1, S _14.2, and S _16.3 in group A) in FIG. 8. The clustering unit 415 may determine S _17.6 as a reference region. The clustering unit 415 may perform a selecting operation (e.g., operation 710 of the process 700 in FIG. 7) to select a pending unit region (e.g., S _10.5) from the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region. The parameter of the pending unit region may be maximum among the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region. The clustering unit 415 may determine that the difference between the parameters of S _10.5 and S _17.6 is 7.1 that is greater than the parameter threshold of 6, which indicates that the terminal condition is met. As a result, the clustering unit 415 may determine that group B includes S _17.6. S _17.6 may be determined as a sub-region.

In some embodiments, the clustering unit 415 may repeat operations 706-716 of the process 700 in FIG. 7 to determine a new group of target unit regions. The clustering unit 415 may determine a start unit region (e.g., S _12.0) with a maximum parameter from the target unit regions to be clustered (e.g., the target unit regions other than S _19.1, S _14.2, and S _16.3 in group A, and S _17.6 in group B) in FIG. 8. The clustering unit 415 may determine S _12.0 as a reference region. The clustering unit 415 may perform a selecting operation (e.g., operation 710 of the process 700 in FIG. 7) to determine a pending unit region (e.g., S _8.1) from the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region. The parameter of the pending unit region may be maximum among the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region. The clustering unit 415 may determine that the difference between the parameters of S _12.0 and S _8.1 is 3.9, which is less than the parameter threshold of 6, and determine that the number of times of performing the selecting operation is 1, which is less than the number threshold of 10, indicating that the terminal condition is not met. As a result, the clustering unit 415 may put S _12.0 and S _8.1 into group C and determine a third updated reference region that includes S _12.0 and S _8.1. The clustering unit 415 may repeat the selecting operation to determine a pending unit region (e.g., S _11.4) from the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the first updated reference region. The clustering unit 415 may determine that the difference between the parameters of S _12.0 and S _11.4 is 0.6, which is less than the parameter threshold of 6, and determine that the number of times of performing the selecting operation is 2, which is less than the number threshold of 10, indicating that the terminal condition is not met. As a result, the clustering unit 415 may put S _11.4 into group C and determine a fourth updated reference region that includes S _12.0, S _8.1, and S _11.4. The clustering unit 415 may repeat the selecting operation for another 7 times and put S _7.5, S _9.4, S _10.9, S _6.9, S _6.5, S _7.0, and S _7.5 into group C. In the tenth time to repeat the selecting operation, the clustering unit 415 may determine S _7.8 as a pending unit region. The clustering unit 415 may determine that the difference between the parameters of S _7.8 and S _12.0 is 4.2, which is less than the parameter threshold of 6, but the number of times of performing the selecting operation is 10, which is equal to the number threshold of 10, indicating that the terminal condition is met. As a result, the clustering unit 415 may determine group C including S _12.0, S _8.1, S _11.4, S _7.5, S _9.4, S _10.9, S _6.9, S _6.5, S _7.0, and S _7.5. S _12.0, S _8.1, S _11.4, S _7.5, S _9.4, S _10.9, S _6.9, S _6.5, S _7.0, and S _7.5 may be combined as a single region that is determined as a sub-region.

In some embodiments, the clustering unit 415 may repeat operations 706-716 of the process 700 in FIG. 7 to determine a new group of target unit regions, until all the target unit regions in FIG. 8 are clustered.

It should be noted that the above description is merely provided for the purposes of illustration, and not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure. For persons having ordinary skills in the art, multiple variations or modifications may be made under the teachings of the present disclosure. However, those variations and modifications do not depart from the scope of the present disclosure.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary process for determining a hot region according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. In some embodiments, the process 900 may be implemented in the online to offline service system 100 illustrated in FIG. 1. For example, the process 900 may be stored in a storage medium (e.g., the storage device 150, or the storage 220 of the processing engine 112) as a form of instructions, and invoked and/or executed by the server 110 (e.g., the processing engine 112 of the server 110, the processor 220 of the processing engine 112, or one or more modules in the processing engine 112 illustrated in FIG. 4) . The operations of the illustrated process 900 presented below are intended to be illustrative. In some embodiments, the process 900 may be accomplished with one or more additional operations not described, and/or without one or more of the operations discussed. Additionally, the order in which the operations of the process 800 as illustrated in FIG. 9 and described below is not intended to be limiting.

In 910, the acquisition unit 421 (the processing engine 112 and/or the interface circuits 210-a, or the second region division module 420) may obtain a plurality of service requests, each of which includes a departure location in a target region.

In some embodiments, the requester terminal 130 and/or the provider terminal 140 may establish a communication (e.g., wireless communication) with the server 110, through an application (e.g., the application 380 in FIG. 3) installed in the requester terminal 130 and/or the provider terminal 140 via the network 120. The application may associate with the online to offline service system 100. For example, the application may be a taxi-hailing application associated with the online to offline service system 100. The application installed in the requester terminal 130 may display the current locations of the service requester and available service providers that are a certain distance away from the service requester.

In some embodiments, a service request may refer to information of an online to offline service that is formally requested and sent out by a service requester to the server 110 via the requester terminal 130. For example, when the service requester sends out the information of the online to offline service to the server 110, the service requester may do so by pressing a button on the interface of the application installed in the requester terminal 130. Upon receiving the information of the online to offline service, the server 110 may determine that the information of the online to offline service is formally sent out and determine the information of the online to offline service as a service request.

In some embodiments, the service request may include a departure location, a destination, a departure time, an arrival time, or the like, or any combination thereof. The departure location and/or the destination may be a specified location input by a service requester through the requester terminal 130 (e.g., the I/O 350 in FIG. 3) . In some embodiments, the requester terminal 130 may automatically obtain the departure location and/or the destination. For example, an event such as “Travel from location A to location B at 10: 00 a. m. on Wednesday” is recorded in a calendar in the requester terminal 130. The requester terminal 130 may automatically determine location A as the departure location, determine location B as the destination, and determine 10: 00 a. m. on Wednesday as the departure time based on the event in the calendar. In some embodiments, the requester terminal 130 may obtain its location (which is referred to as the location of the service requester) herein through a positioning technology in the requester terminal 130, for example, the GPS, GLONASS, COMPASS, QZSS, BDS, WiFi positioning technology, or the like, or any combination thereof.

In some embodiments, after receiving a service request from a terminal (e.g., the requester terminal 130) associated with a service requester, the server 110 may transmit the service request to one or more terminals (e.g., the provider terminal 140) associated with one or more service providers (e.g., drivers) . After one of the one or more service providers accepts the service request through the application installed in the provider terminal 140, the server 110 may transmit information (e.g., the name, the phone number, the gender, the plate number of a vehicle, the vehicle brand, etc. ) related to the one of the one or more service providers to the service requester. During the trip from the departure location to the destination, the application installed in the requester terminal 130 and/or the provider terminal 140 may display a route from the departure location to the destination and the real-time location of the service requester (also the service provider) .

In some embodiments, the service request may be a real-time request or a request that needs to make an appointment. As used herein, a real-time request may be a request that the service requester wishes to receive the online to offline service at the present moment or at a defined time (e.g., 1 minute, 2 minites, or 5 minutes after the present moment) reasonably close to the present moment for an ordinary person in the art, so that a service provider is required to depart immediately or substantially immediately after the server 110 receives the service request.

A request that needs to make an appointment may refer to a request that the service requester wishes to receive the online to offline service at a time (e.g., 20 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day after the present moment) reasonably long from the present moment for the ordinary person in the art, so that a service provider is not required to depart immediately or substantially immediately after the server 110 receives the service request.

In some embodiments, the departure location may include longitude and latitude coordinates and a location name. For example, the location name may be “Bus station of Dabeiyao East, Jianguo road, China World Trade Center, Chaoyang district” and the corresponding longitude and latitude coordinates may be (116.46419, 39.90846) . It should be noted that the above description about the representation of the departure location is merely provided for the purposes of illustration, and not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure.

In some embodiments, the acquisition unit 421 may obtain the plurality of service requests associated with a preset time period (e.g., last week) from a storage medium (e.g., the storage device 150, or the storage 220) . The acquisition unit 421 may extract the departure locations from the plurality of service requests and/or determine the number of service requests corresponding to a same depature location. For example, the acquisition unit 421 may process the plurality of service requests and obtain a result of “ (116.46419, 39.90846) , Bus station of Dabeiyao East, Jianguo road, China World Trade Center, Chaoyang district, 12, ” wherein “(116.46419, 39.90846) ” refers to the longitude and latitude coordinates of a departure location, “Bus station of Dabeiyao East, Jianguo road, China World Trade Center, Chaoyang district” refers to the location name of the departure location, and “12” refers to the number of service requests corresponding to the departure location.

In 920, the determination unit 423 (the processing engine 112 and/or the processing circuits 210-b, or the second region division module 420) may determine, in the target region, a plurality of sub-regions corresponding to the departure locations, and determine a number of the service requests of which the departure locations are located in each of the plurality of sub-regions.

In some embodiments, the determination unit 423 may determine a plurality of target unit regions in the target region according to the departure locations of the plurality of service requests. Each of the plurality of target unit regions may include at least one departure location. The determination unit 423 may combine the plurality of target unit regions into a plurality of sub-regions. The distances between any two of the sub-regions may be greater than the distance threshold. In this way, there are not too many sub-regions, which may not affect the efficiency of processing the sub-regions in the subsequent operation (e.g., the operation for determining the number of the service requests of which the departure locations are located in each of the plurality of sub-regions, or operation 930) .

In some embodiments, the determination unit 423 may determine the target unit regions based on the following operations. The target region may be divided, online or offline, into a plurality of unit regions (e.g., grid regions) by the server 110 (e.g., the determination unit 423) , the requester terminal 130, the provider terminal 140, or an external device communicated with the online to offline service system 100. Each unit region may be represented by longitude and latitude coordinates. For example, a unit region may be represented by longitude and latitude coordinates of the center point of the unit region.

In some embodiments, when keeping a certain number of digits after the decimal point of the longitude and/or latitude coordinates, the determination unit 423 may round off the longitude and/or latitude coordinates, or directly delete the digits. For example, to keep 3 digits after the decimal point of the latitude coordinate of (116.46419, 39.90876) , the determination unit 423 may round off the latitude coordinate to obtain processed longitude and latitude coordinates (116.46419, 39.909) , or directly delete the last two digits of the latitude coordinate to obtain processed longitude and latitude coordinates (116.46419, 39.908) .

Merely by way of example, the longitude and latitude coordinates of a departure location is (116.46419, 39.90846) . The longitude and latitude coordinates of unit region 1 and unit region 2 are (116.46419, 39.908) and (116.46419, 39.909) , respectively. The determination unit 423 may generate a processed longitude and latitude coordinates (116.46419, 39.908) of the departure location. The determination unit 423 may determine that unit region 1 is a target unit region including the departure location by comparing the processed longitude and latitude coordinates (116.46419, 39.908) of the departure location, the longitude and latitude coordinates (116.46419, 39.908) of unit region 1, and the longitude and latitude coordinates (116.46419, 39.909) of unit region 2.

For example, the longitude and latitude coordinates of departure locations 1-4 are (116.46419, 39.90846) , (116.46419, 39.90837) , (116.46419, 39.90869) , and (116.46419, 39.90954) , respectively. The determination unit 423 may keep 3 digits after a decimal point of the latitude coordinates of departure locations 1-4 and generate processed longitude and latitude coordinates of departure locations 1-4, such as (116.46419, 39.908) , (116.46419, 39.908) , (116.46419, 39.908) , and (116.46419, 39.909) . The determination unit 423 may determine a target unit region with a predetermined area, which includes the departure locations 1-3.

For example, there are 4 target unit regions, such as target unit regions 1-4. The determination unit 423 may designate target unit region 4 as the reference region. The numbers of the service requests of which the departure locations are located in target unit regions 1-3 are 300, 400, and 200, respectively. The distance threshold may be set as 2 km.

The determination unit 423 may rank target unit regions 1-3 based on the number of the service requests. According to the ranking result, the determination unit 423 may determine the distance (e.g., 1.5 km) between target unit region 4 and target unit region 2 first, then the distance (e.g., 1 km) between target unit region 4 and target unit region 1, and finally the distance (e.g., 2.5 km) between target unit region 4 and target unit region 3. The determination unit 423 may determine that the distance (e.g., 1.5 km) between target unit region 4 and target unit region 2, and the distance (e.g., 1 km) between target unit region 4 and target unit region 1 are less than the distance threshold of 2 km. The determination unit 423 may combine target unit region 4, target unit region 1, and target unit region 2 as a sub-region.

In some embodiments, the designation unit 427 (the processing engine 112 and/or the processing circuits 210-b, or the second region division module 420) may automatically determine a name (or other designations such as a number) for each sub-region, which may reduce the heavy workload and cost for manual work in determining the name for each sub-region.

For example, there is a target unit region D including departure locations 1-3. The longitude and latitude coordinates of departure locations 1-3 are (116.46419, 39.90846) , (116.46419, 39.90837) , and (116.46419, 39.90869) , respectively. The name of departure location 1 is “Bus station of Dabeiyao East, Jianguo road, China World Trade Center, Chaoyang district. ” The numbers of service requests corresponding to departure locations 1-3 are 12, 11, and 9, respectively. The designation unit 427 may designate the name of departure location 1 as the name of target unit region D (i.e., Bus station of Dabeiyao East, Jianguo road, China World Trade Center, Chaoyang district) . There is a sub-region including target unit region D and target unit region E. The name of target unit region E is “Subway station of Dabeiyao East, Jianguo road, China World Trade Center, Chaoyang district” and the number of service requests in target unit region E is 40, which is greater than the number (e.g., 32) of service requests in target unit region D. The designation unit 427 may designate the name of target unit region E as the name of the sub-region (i.e., Subway station of Dabeiyao East, Jianguo road, China World Trade Center, Chaoyang district) and designate the longitude and latitude coordinates of target unit region E as the longitude and latitude coordinates of the center of the sub-region.

In 930, the judgement unit 425 (the processing engine 112 and/or the processing circuits 210-b, or the second region division module 420) may compare the number of service requests of which the departure locations are located in each sub-region to a request threshold. The judgement unit 425 may designate the sub-region as a hot region in response to a comparison result that the number of service requests in the sub-region is greater than the request threshold. The judgement unit 425 may designate the sub-region as a non-hot region in response to a comparison result that the number of service requests in the sub-region is equal to or less than the request threshold. As shown in FIG. 10, the circles (e.g., 1010) refers to the hot regions.

In some embodiments, the second region division module 420 may determine a strategy for at least one of the plurality of sub-regions. In certain embodiments, the strategy aims to improve the overall efficiency and/or overall value created for the O2O service. For example, the second region division module 420 may generate a strategy for the hot region to increase the resource supply in the hot region and generate a strategy for the non-hot region to increase the resource demand and/or decrease the resource supply in the non-hot region.

For example, the second region division module 420 may transmit one or more special offers (e.g., electronic coupons) to terminals (e.g., the requester terminal 130) associated with service requesters in the non-hot region to stimulate the service requesters to initiate more service requests in the non-hot region. Alternatively or additionally, the second region division module 420 may transmit a message indicating which sub-regions are the hot regions or the non-hot regions and the positioning information of the hot regions and/or the non-hot regions to terminals (e.g., the provider terminal 140) associated with the service providers in the target region, and direct the terminals to display the positioning information of the hot regions and/or the non-hot regions (e.g., as shown in FIG. 10) . The service providers may make their own decisions about whether to go to the hot regions based on the displayed hot regions and/or non-hot regions. Alternatively or additionally, the second region division module 420 may increase the service price (e.g., the price a service requester need to pay for a service request) in the hot regions to attract the service providers located in the non-hot regions to the hot regions. If a service provider decides to go the hot regions (or one of the hot regions) , he/she may send a message (e.g. as response to the message from the server) to inform the platform that he/she will be heading the hot regions. By receiving the message from the service provider, the server may predict the supply/demand dynamics in the target region.

In some embodiments, the processing engine 112 may divide a target region based on the process 500 (and/or the process 700) and the process 900. For example, the second region division module 420 may determine a plurality of target unit regions in the target region based on operation 910 and a part of operation 920 of the process 900 in FIG. 9. The first region division module 410 may cluster the target unit regions into a plurality of groups based on operation 530 of the process 500 in FIG. 5 and/or operations 706-716 of the process 700 in FIG. 7. The first region division module 410 may divide the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups by performing operation 540 in the process 500 in FIG. 5. The processing engine 112 may conduct operation 930 based on the combined process.

Having thus described the basic concepts, it may be rather apparent to those skilled in the art after reading this detailed disclosure that the foregoing detailed disclosure is intended to be presented by way of example only and is not limiting. Various alterations, improvements, and modifications may occur and are intended to those skilled in the art, though not expressly stated herein. These alterations, improvements, and modifications are intended to be suggested by this disclosure, and are within the spirit and scope of the exemplary embodiments of this disclosure.

Moreover, certain terminology has been used to describe embodiments of the present disclosure. For example, the terms “one embodiment, ” “an embodiment, ” and/or “some embodiments” mean that a particular feature, structure or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment of the present disclosure. Therefore, it is emphasized and should be appreciated that two or more references to “an embodiment” or “one embodiment” or “an alternative embodiment” in various portions of this specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment. Furthermore, the particular features, structures or characteristics may be combined as suitable in one or more embodiments of the present disclosure.

Further, it will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, aspects of the present disclosure may be illustrated and described herein in any of a number of patentable classes or context including any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof. Accordingly, aspects of the present disclosure may be implemented entirely hardware, entirely software (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc. ) or combining software and hardware implementation that may all generally be referred to herein as a “unit, ” “module, ” or “system. ” Furthermore, aspects of the present disclosure may take the form of a computer program product embodied in one or more computer readable media having computer readable program code embodied thereon.

A computer readable signal medium may include a propagated data signal with computer readable program code embodied therein, for example, in baseband or as part of a carrier wave. Such a propagated signal may take any of a variety of forms, including electro-magnetic, optical, or the like, or any suitable combination thereof. A computer readable signal medium may be any computer readable medium that is not a computer readable storage medium and that may communicate, propagate, or transport a program for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device. Program code embodied on a computer readable signal medium may be transmitted using any appropriate medium, including wireless, wireline, optical fiber cable, RF, or the like, or any suitable combination of the foregoing.

Computer program code for carrying out operations for aspects of the present disclosure may be written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as Java, Scala, Smalltalk, Eiffel, JADE, Emerald, C++, C#, VB. NET, Python or the like, conventional procedural programming languages, such as the "C" programming language, Visual Basic, Fortran 2003, Perl, COBOL 2002, PHP, ABAP, dynamic programming languages such as Python, Ruby and Groovy, or other programming languages. The program code may execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server 110. In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through any type of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN) , or the connection may be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider) or in a cloud computing environment or offered as a service such as a Software as a Service (SaaS) .

Furthermore, the recited order of processing elements or sequences, or the use of numbers, letters, or other designations therefore, is not intended to limit the claimed processes and methods to any order except as may be specified in the claims. Although the above disclosure discusses through various examples what is currently considered to be a variety of useful embodiments of the disclosure, it is to be understood that such detail is solely for that purpose, and that the appended claims are not limited to the disclosed embodiments, but, on the contrary, are intended to cover modifications and equivalent arrangements that are within the spirit and scope of the disclosed embodiments. For example, although the implementation of various components described above may be embodied in a hardware device, it may also be implemented as a software only solution, e.g., an installation on an existing server or mobile device.

Similarly, it should be appreciated that in the foregoing description of embodiments of the present disclosure, various features are sometimes grouped together in a single embodiment, figure, or description thereof for the purpose of streamlining the disclosure aiding in the understanding of one or more of the various embodiments. This method of disclosure, however, is not to be interpreted as reflecting an intention that the claimed subject matter requires more features than are expressly recited in each claim. Rather, claimed subject matter may lie in less than all features of a single foregoing disclosed embodiment.

Claims

A system for region division related to an online to offline (O2O) service, comprising:

at least one storage device including a set of instructions;

at least one processor in communication with the at least one storage device, wherein when executing the set of instructions, the at least one processor is directed to cause the system to:

obtain positioning information of each target unit region in a target region, which includes a plurality of target unit regions;

determine a parameter for each of the plurality of target unit regions;

cluster the plurality of target unit regions into a plurality of groups based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions and the positioning information;

divide the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups; and

determine a strategy associated with the parameter based on the plurality of sub-regions.
The system of claim 1, wherein to cluster the plurality of target unit regions into the plurality of groups based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions, the at least one processor is directed to cause the system to:

repeat an operation until all the target unit regions are clustered, wherein the operation includes:

determining target unit regions to be clustered from the plurality of target unit regions;

determining a start unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered, the parameter of the start unit region being maximum or minimum among the target unit regions to be clustered; and

determining one of the plurality of groups as the group including the start unit region.
The system of claim 2, wherein the determining of the one of the plurality of groups as the group including the start unit region includes:

initiating an iteration process including a plurality of iterations, each of the plurality of iterations including:

determining a reference region, the reference region being the start unit region in a first iteration of the plurality of iterations or a previously updated reference region in a previous iteration;

selecting a pending unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered, the pending unit region being adjacent to the reference region, the parameter of the pending unit region being maximum or minimum among the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region;

determining a difference between the parameters of the start unit region and the pending unit region;

determining whether the difference is greater than a parameter threshold;

in response to a determination that the difference is equal to or less than a parameter threshold,

determining an updated reference region by adding the pending unit region to the reference region; and

initiating a new iteration;

in response to a determination that the difference is greater than the parameter threshold, terminating the iteration process; and

determining the reference region determined in a last iteration of the plurality of iterations as the one of the plurality of groups.
The system of claim 3, wherein the each of the plurality of iterations further includes:

determining a number of the iterations that have been initiated;

determining whether the number of the iterations that have been initiated is equal to a number threshold; and

in response to a determination that the number of the iterations that have been initiated is equal to the number threshold, terminating the iteration process.
The system of any one of claims 1-4, wherein

each of the plurality of groups includes at least one of the plurality of target unit regions;

for each group that includes two or more of the plurality of target unit regions,

differences of the parameters between any two of the two or more of the plurality of target unit regions are equal to or less than a parameter threshold; and

the two or more of the plurality of target unit regions form a continuous region.
The system of any one of claims 1-5, wherein to divide the target region into the plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups, the at least one processor is directed to cause the system to:

for each group that includes one target unit region, designate the target unit region as one of the plurality of sub-regions; and

for each group that includes two or more target unit regions,

combine the two or more target unit regions into a single region; and

designate the single region as one of the plurality of sub-regions.
The system of any one of claims 1-6, wherein the parameter of the target unit region includes at least one of resource supply related to the online to offline service, resource demand related to the online to offline service, or a difference between the resource supply and the resource demand.
The system of any one of claims 1-7, wherein the strategy associated with the parameter includes at least one of transportation capacity scheduling or price adjustment related to the online to offline service in at least one of the plurality of sub-regions.
A system for region division related to an online to offline service, comprising:

at least one storage device including a set of instructions;

at least one processor in communication with the at least one storage device, wherein when executing the set of instructions, the at least one processor is directed to cause the system to:

obtain a plurality of service requests, each of which includes a departure location in a target region;

determine a plurality of sub-regions in the target region;

for each of the plurality of sub-regions,

determine a number of the service requests of which the departure locations are located in the sub-region;

compare the number of the service requests to a request threshold; and

in response to a comparison result that the number of the service requests is greater than the request threshold, designate the sub-region as a hot region; and

transmit one or more messages relating to the hot regions to an electronic device.
The system of claim 9, wherein to determine the plurality of sub-regions in the target region, the at least one processor is directed to cause the system to:

determine, in the target region, target unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations; and

combine the target unit regions into the plurality of sub-regions, wherein distances between any two of the plurality of sub-regions are greater than a distance threshold.
The system of claim 10, wherein to determine, in the target region, the target unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations, the at least one processor is directed to cause the system to:

divide the target region into a plurality of unit regions;

for each of the departure locations, determine one of the plurality of unit regions that includes the each of the departure locations; and

designate the unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations as the target unit regions.
The system of claim 11, wherein the departure locations and the plurality of unit regions are represented by longitude and latitude; and

wherein to determine, for the each of the departure locations, the one of the plurality of unit regions that includes the each of the departure locations, the at least one processor is directed to cause the system to:

process the longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations to obtain processed longitudes and latitudes, wherein the number of digits after a decimal point of the processed longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations is equal to that of the unit regions; and

determine the one of the plurality of unit regions of which the longitude and latitude is equal to the processed longitude and latitude of the each of the departure locations.
The system of claim 10, wherein the departure locations are represented by longitude and latitude; and

wherein to determine, in the target region, the target unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations, the at least one processor is directed to cause the system to:

process the longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations to make an equal number of digits after a decimal point of the longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations; and

determine the target unit regions based on the processed longitude and latitude of the departure locations, each of the target unit regions including the departure locations with an equal processed longitude and latitude.
The system of any one of claims 9-13, wherein the electronic device is associated with a service provider.
The system of any one of claims 9-14, wherein when executing the set of instructions, for each of the plurality of sub-regions, the at least one processor is further directed to cause the system to:

in response to the comparison result that the number of the service requests is less than or equal to the request threshold, designate the sub-region as a non-hot region; and

wherein the one or more messages are configured to

increase a service price related to at least one hot region to attract the service providers in at least one non-hot region to the at least one hot region;

transmit at least one special offer related to the online to offline service to at least one service requester in at least one non-hot region; or

transmit positioning information of the hot regions to at least one service provider in the target region.
A method for region division related to an online to offline (O2O) service, implemented on a computing device having at least one storage device and at least one processor, the method comprising:

obtaining positioning information of each target unit region in a target region, which includes a plurality of target unit regions;

determining a parameter for each of the plurality of target unit regions;

clustering the plurality of target unit regions into a plurality of groups based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions and the positioning information;

dividing the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups; and

determining a strategy associated with the parameter based on the plurality of sub-regions.
The method of claim 16, wherein the clustering of the plurality of target unit regions into the plurality of groups based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions includes:

repeating an operation until all the target unit regions are clustered, wherein the operation includes:

determining target unit regions to be clustered from the plurality of target unit regions;

determining a start unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered, the parameter of the start unit region being maximum or minimum among the target unit regions to be clustered; and

determining one of the plurality of groups as the group including the start unit region.
The method of claim 17, wherein the determining of the one of the plurality of groups as the group including the start unit region includes:

initiating an iteration process including a plurality of iterations, each of the plurality of iterations including:

determining a reference region, the reference region being the start unit region in a first iteration of the plurality of iterations or a previously updated reference region in a previous iteration;

selecting a pending unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered, the pending unit region being adjacent to the reference region, the parameter of the pending unit region being maximum or minimum among the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region;

determining a difference between the parameters of the start unit region and the pending unit region;

determining whether the difference is greater than a parameter threshold;

in response to a determination that the difference is equal to or less than a parameter threshold,

determining an updated reference region by adding the pending unit region to the reference region; and

initiating a new iteration;

in response to a determination that the difference is greater than the parameter threshold, terminating the iteration process; and

determining the reference region determined in a last iteration of the plurality of iterations as the one of the plurality of groups.
The method of claim 18, wherein the each of the plurality of iterations further includes:

determining a number of the iterations that have been initiated;

determining whether the number of the iterations that have been initiated is equal to a number threshold; and

in response to a determination that the number of the iterations that have been initiated is equal to the number threshold, terminating the iteration process.
The method of any one of claims 16-19, wherein

each of the plurality of groups includes at least one of the plurality of target unit regions;

for each group that includes two or more of the plurality of target unit regions,

differences of the parameters between any two of the two or more of the plurality of target unit regions are equal to or less than a parameter threshold; and

the two or more of the plurality of target unit regions form a continuous region.
The method of any one of claims 16-20, wherein the dividing of the target region into the plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups includes:

for each group that includes one target unit region, designating the target unit region as one of the plurality of sub-regions; and

for each group that includes two or more target unit regions,

combining the two or more target unit regions into a single region; and

designating the single region as one of the plurality of sub-regions.
The method of any one of claims 16-21, wherein the parameter of the target unit region includes at least one of resource supply related to the online to offline service, resource demand related to the online to offline service, or a difference between the resource supply and the resource demand.
The method of any one of claims 16-22, wherein the strategy associated with the parameter includes at least one of transportation capacity scheduling or price adjustment related to the online to offline service in at least one of the plurality of sub-regions.
A method for region division related to an online to offline service, implemented on a computing device having at least one storage device and at least one processor, the method comprising:

obtaining a plurality of service requests, each of which includes a departure location in a target region;

determining a plurality of sub-regions in the target region;

for each of the plurality of sub-regions,

determining a number of the service requests of which the departure locations are located in the sub-region;

comparing the number of the service requests to a request threshold; and

in response to a comparison result that the number of the service requests is greater than the request threshold, designating the sub-region as a hot region; and

transmitting one or more messages relating to the hot regions to an electronic device.
The method of claim 24, wherein the determining of the plurality of sub-regions in the target region includes:

determining, in the target region, target unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations; and

combining the target unit regions into the plurality of sub-regions, wherein distances between any two of the plurality of sub-regions are greater than a distance threshold.
The method of claim 25, wherein the determining of the target unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations in the target region includes:

dividing the target region into a plurality of unit regions;

for each of the departure locations, determining one of the plurality of unit regions that includes the each of the departure locations; and

designating the unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations as the target unit regions.
The method of claim 26, wherein the departure locations and the plurality of unit regions are represented by longitude and latitude; and

wherein the determining, for the each of the departure locations, of the one of the plurality of unit regions that includes the each of the departure locations includes:

processing the longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations to obtain processed longitudes and latitudes, wherein the number of digits after a decimal point of the processed longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations is equal to that of the unit regions; and

determining the one of the plurality of unit regions of which the longitude and latitude is equal to the processed longitude and latitude of the each of the departure locations.
The method of claim 25, wherein the departure locations are represented by longitude and latitude; and

wherein the determining, in the target region, of the target unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations includes:

processing the longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations to make an equal number of digits after a decimal point of the longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations; and

determining the target unit regions based on the processed longitude and latitude of the departure locations, each of the target unit regions including the departure locations with an equal processed longitude and latitude.
The method of any one of claims 24-28, wherein the electronic device is associated with a service provider.
The method of any one of claims 24-28, the method further comprising:

for each of the plurality of sub-regions, in response to the comparison result that the number of the service requests is less than or equal to the request threshold, designating the sub-region as a non-hot region; and

wherein the one or more messages are configured to

increase a service price related to at least one hot region to attract the service providers in at least one non-hot region to the at least one hot region;

transmit at least one special offer related to the online to offline service to at least one service requester in at least one non-hot region; or

transmit positioning information of the hot regions to at least one service provider in the target region.
A system for region division related to an online to offline (O2O) service, comprising:

a first obtaining unit configured to obtain positioning information of each target unit region in a target region, which includes a plurality of target unit regions;

a second obtaining unit configured to determine a parameter for each of the plurality of target unit regions;

a clustering unit configured to cluster the plurality of target unit regions into a plurality of groups based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions and the positioning information; and

a division unit configured to

divide the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups; and

determine a strategy associated with the parameter based on the plurality of sub-regions.
The system of claim 31, wherein the clustering of the plurality of target unit regions into the plurality of groups based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions includes:

repeating an operation until all the target unit regions are clustered, wherein the operation includes:

determining target unit regions to be clustered from the plurality of target unit regions;

determining a start unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered, the parameter of the start unit region being maximum or minimum among the target unit regions to be clustered; and

determining one of the plurality of groups as the group including the start unit region.
The system of claim 32, wherein the determining of the one of the plurality of groups as the group including the start unit region includes:

initiating an iteration process including a plurality of iterations, each of the plurality of iterations including:

determining a reference region, the reference region being the start unit region in a first iteration of the plurality of iterations or a previously updated reference region in a previous iteration;

selecting a pending unit region from the target unit regions to be clustered, the pending unit region being adjacent to the reference region, the parameter of the pending unit region being maximum or minimum among the target unit regions to be clustered that are adjacent to the reference region;

determining a difference between the parameters of the start unit region and the pending unit region;

determining whether the difference is greater than a parameter threshold;

in response to a determination that the difference is equal to or less than a parameter threshold,

determining an updated reference region by adding the pending unit region to the reference region; and

initiating a new iteration;

in response to a determination that the difference is greater than the parameter threshold, terminating the iteration process; and

determining the reference region determined in a last iteration of the plurality of iterations as the one of the plurality of groups.
The system of claim 33, wherein the each of the plurality of iterations further includes:

determining a number of the iterations that have been initiated;

determining whether the number of the iterations that have been initiated is equal to a number threshold; and

in response to a determination that the number of the iterations that have been initiated is equal to the number threshold, terminating the iteration process.
The system of any one of claims 31-34, wherein

each of the plurality of groups includes at least one of the plurality of target unit regions;

for each group that includes two or more of the plurality of target unit regions,

differences of the parameters between any two of the two or more of the plurality of target unit regions are equal to or less than a parameter threshold; and

the two or more of the plurality of target unit regions form a continuous region.
The system of any one of claims 31-35, wherein the dividing of the target region into the plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups includes:

for each group that includes one target unit region, designating the target unit region as one of the plurality of sub-regions; and

for each group that includes two or more target unit regions,

combining the two or more target unit regions into a single region; and

designating the single region as one of the plurality of sub-regions.
The system of any one of claims 31-36, wherein the parameter of the target unit region includes at least one of resource supply related to the online to offline service, resource demand related to the online to offline service, or a difference between the resource supply and the resource demand.
The system of any one of claims 31-37, wherein the strategy associated with the parameter includes at least one of transportation capacity scheduling or price adjustment related to the online to offline service in at least one of the plurality of sub-regions.
A system for region division related to an online to offline service, comprising:

an acquisition unit configured to obtain a plurality of service requests, each of which includes a departure location in a target region;

a determination unit configured to

determine a plurality of sub-regions in the target region; and

for each of the plurality of sub-regions, determine a number of the service requests of which the departure locations are located in the sub-region;

a judgement unit configured to

for each of the plurality of sub-regions,

compare the number of the service requests to a request threshold; and

in response to a comparison result that the number of the service requests is greater than the request threshold, designate the sub-region as a hot region; and

a transmission unit configured to transmit one or more messages relating to the hot regions to an electronic device.
The system of claim 39, wherein the determining of the plurality of sub-regions in the target region includes:

determining, in the target region, target unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations; and

combining the target unit regions into the plurality of sub-regions, wherein distances between any two of the plurality of sub-regions are greater than a distance threshold.
The system of claim 40, wherein the determining of the target unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations in the target region includes:

dividing the target region into a plurality of unit regions;

for each of the departure locations, determining one of the plurality of unit regions that includes the each of the departure locations; and

designating the unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations as the target unit regions.
The system of claim 41, wherein the departure locations and the plurality of unit regions are represented by longitude and latitude; and

wherein the determining, for the each of the departure locations, of the one of the plurality of unit regions that includes the each of the departure locations includes:

processing the longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations to obtain processed longitudes and latitudes, wherein the number of digits after a decimal point of the processed longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations is equal to that of the unit regions; and

determining the one of the plurality of unit regions of which the longitude and latitude is equal to the processed longitude and latitude of the each of the departure locations.
The system of claim 40, wherein the departure locations are represented by longitude and latitude; and

wherein the determining, in the target region, of the target unit regions each of which includes at least one of the departure locations includes:

processing the longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations to make an equal number of digits after a decimal point of the longitudes and latitudes of the departure locations; and

determining the target unit regions based on the processed longitude and latitude of the departure locations, each of the target unit regions including the departure locations with an equal processed longitude and latitude.
The system of any one of claims 39-43, wherein the electronic device is associated with a service provider.
The system of any one of claims 39-43, wherein the judgement unit are further configured to

for each of the plurality of sub-regions, in response to the comparison result that the number of the service requests is less than or equal to the request threshold, designate the sub-region as a non-hot region; and

wherein the one or more messages are configured to

increase a service price related to at least one hot region to attract the service providers in at least one non-hot region to the at least one hot region;

transmit at least one special offer related to the online to offline service to at least one service requester in at least one non-hot region; or

transmit positioning information of the hot regions to at least one service provider in the target region.
A non-transitory computer readable medium, comprising at least one set of instructions for region division related to an online to offline (O2O) service, wherein when executed by one or more processors of a computing device, the at least one set of instructions causes the computing device to perform a method, the method comprising:

obtaining positioning information of each target unit region in a target region, which includes a plurality of target unit regions;

determining a parameter for each of the plurality of target unit regions;

clustering the plurality of target unit regions into a plurality of groups based on the parameters of the plurality of target unit regions and the positioning information;

dividing the target region into a plurality of sub-regions based on the plurality of groups; and

determining a strategy associated with the parameter based on the plurality of sub-regions.
A non-transitory computer readable medium, comprising at least one set of instructions for region division related to an online to offline (O2O) service, wherein when executed by one or more processors of a computing device, the at least one set of instructions causes the computing device to perform a method, the method comprising:

obtaining a plurality of service requests, each of which includes a departure location in a target region;

determining a plurality of sub-regions in the target region;

for each of the plurality of sub-regions,

determining a number of the service requests of which the departure locations are located in the sub-region;

comparing the number of the service requests to a request threshold; and

in response to a comparison result that the number of the service requests is greater than the request threshold, designating the sub-region as a hot region; and

transmitting one or more messages relating to the hot regions to an electronic device.