Business8 min read
GIS Data Analysis for Market Research: Where It Adds Real Value
Survey research tells you what people say. Spatial analysis tells you what is actually there. The two answer different halves of the same question.
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Notes on data, maps and the parts that go wrong
Working notes rather than marketing. Each article covers a decision we make regularly and explains why it matters, with the trade-offs stated plainly.
CategoriesBusinessFundamentalsHow-to
How-to9 min read
How to Build a Geospatial Data Pipeline
Most spatial pipelines work perfectly once. The design decisions that matter are the ones that keep them working on run twenty.
Business8 min read
Competitor Location Analysis
A map of competitors is a starting point. Overlap, saturation and rate of change are what make it a decision tool.
Business9 min read
Restaurant Location Analysis
Busy does not mean available. The areas that feel best on a Saturday visit are often the ones with the least room for another venue.
How-to10 min read
How to Create a Heatmap from Location Data
Bandwidth, normalisation and colour classification each change the conclusion. A heatmap without those three stated is decoration.
Fundamentals7 min read
CSV vs GeoJSON vs Shapefile
Four formats, four sets of limitations. Choosing the wrong one loses data silently, which is the worst way to lose it.
Business8 min read
How Businesses Use Location Data
Not dashboards. Seven specific decisions where location data changes the answer, and what it costs to get there.
How-to7 min read
Web Scraping vs APIs
APIs are stable and constrained. Scraping is flexible and fragile. The right choice depends on the constraint you can least afford.
Fundamentals7 min read
What Is Location Intelligence?
Mapping shows you where things are. Location intelligence tells you which option is stronger, by how much, and for what reason.
How-to9 min read
How to Collect Google Maps Data
The hard part is not getting listings. It is getting all of them, once each, with categories that mean the same thing everywhere.
Fundamentals8 min read
What Is POI Data?
A POI record is a name, a category and a coordinate. Everything that makes POI data hard lives in those three fields.
Fundamentals9 min read
What Is Geospatial Data?
Geospatial data is any data with a location attached. What makes it different is that distance, containment and adjacency between records carry meaning.
Editorial policy
Why there are only a dozen articles here
We publish when we have something specific to say about work we actually do. Every article is written by the team that builds these datasets, and we would rather have twelve useful pieces than two hundred generated ones.
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