6 industry leaders on the state of Location Intelligence today

We're one week out from the start of CARTO Locations Madrid!

To give you a sense of what to expect next week in Madrid and next month in New York we asked several CARTO Locations speakers for their thoughts on the state of Location Intelligence today. Each speaker was asked the same set of questions and the wide range of responses is just a small preview of the new and exciting applications of Location Intelligence we'll be announcing in Madrid.

Read the answers below and if you still haven't registered for CARTO Locations there's still time.

See you in Madrid!

Dan Cookson | Independent Geospatial Consultant

CARTO Locations Presentation: How Spatial Analysis will determine the future of Airbnb

What underrated aspect of location intelligence do you wish received more attention in your industry?

The ability to quickly author publish and share interactive web-based maps!

Is there a common pain point in your industry that has been alleviated thanks to working with location data and spatial analysis?

In the housing sector there is a huge opportunity to provide far more current and co-ordinated insights into new housing demand and provision. Web based location data can provide the foundation for better understanding amongst both the developers/planners and the communities they serve.

What recent Location Intelligence use case inspired you and why?

A recent blog post by Professor Alasdair Rae on population grid density across Europe inspired me to collaborate with him and to publish my own interactive map of the same population via Twitter. This has been my most popular @CARTO map ever and has spawned several articles and a range of incredibly interesting discussions on Twitter

Hannah Curtis | Product Manager Data

CARTO Locations Presentation: From Simple to Decadent Analytics: Making a Data Streams Layer Cake

What underrated aspect of location intelligence do you wish received more attention in your industry?

Location Intelligence itself is underrated in most industries. The capabilities and value aren't widely known yet and the fact that it's accessible with easy-to-use modern tools even less so.

Is there a common pain point in your industry that has been alleviated thanks to working with location data and spatial analysis?

There are many factors in an organization’s success: people competitors economic shifts and even weather. Location is a fundamental component of all of those pieces and by analyzing them in that context you’re able to get a more complete view of their impact.

What recent Location Intelligence use case inspired you and why?

A recent Location Intelligence project that inspired me was one created by my co-presenter Wenfei who processed and studied more than one million points of GPS data to understand spatio-temporal public space usage in A Million Walks in the Park.

Andrew Hill | Co-Founder and CEO at Textile.io

CARTO Locations Presentation: Location in the Era of Privacy

What underrated aspect of location intelligence do you wish received more attention in your industry?

The story unfolding around Facebook and Cambridge Analytica is shining a light on issues around the control we have over our own personal data and these issues are the same when it comes to our location data. We are living in a moment that feels as if it were a free-for-all as organizations collect personal data on consumers in pursuit of greater intelligence and profits. Personally I'm excited about our current moment and its renewed attention on issues related to data privacy and excited to be working on projects that restore ownership over personal as well as location data to consumers. In fact we have been trying to do this at textile.io and Textile Photos will soon be tackling these very data privacy issues

Is there a common pain point in your industry that has been alleviated thanks to working with location data and spatial analysis?

Consumers are generally aware that when using connected devices and location apps their location data is being collected but not many consumers realize how much of their personal and private information can be labeled indexed and tracked when spatial fields are added to this data. So for me the biggest pain point concerns the lack of data literacy and education around the uses and abuses of our data. As consumers we should do more to understand what our data says about us. As businesses we should be finding new ways to collaborate with users in an open transparent ways that provides real measurable value to consumers in return for data they willingly share.

What recent Location Intelligence use case inspired you and why?

Whether the place you live or the place you are traveling it's always so nice to understand some of the history of that place. For that reason and since I've recently moved to San Francisco a really awesome project I’ve spent some time exploring is Noah Veltman’s SF Street Names.

Don’t miss one of our two CARTO Locations conferences in 2018! Learn more at our conference website: CARTO Locations 2018

Maarit Kahila | Co-Founder and Business Development Director at Maptionnaire

CARTO Locations Presentation: Sector Focus: Smart Cities

What underrated aspect of location intelligence do you wish received more attention in your industry?

One area in need of more attention when it comes to Location Intelligence concerns follow up reporting on whether or not completed projects actually serve the needs of local residents for whom they are implemented. This is incredibly important topic especially for cities and local governments implementing smart city projects that will help ensure that future projects are built with the most inclusive and citizen-centric tools data and resources.

Is there a common pain point in your industry that has been alleviated thanks to working with location data and spatial analysis?

Two interrelated pain points for my industry involve a lack of relevant location data on local residents as well as a lack of collaboration among different companies and organizations. Location Intelligence provides a solution to these common roadblocks because of its open source tech and ability to import datasets from various data streams.

What recent Location Intelligence use case inspired you and why?

The US 181 Harbor Bridge Project a transportation initiative headed by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is a recent Location Intelligence use case that is inspiring because it solicited engagement from local residents at each stage along the way to ensure that local communities would benefit from the project.

Tim Kiely | Head of Research and Lead Data Scientist Hodges Ward Elliot

CARTO Locations Presentation: Profiting in Commercial Real Estate using Location Intelligence

What underrated aspect of location intelligence do you wish received more attention in your industry?

Interactivity. Real estate especially commercial primarily operates using static images. Interactive mapping is a fantastic way to unlock insights from complex spatial data.

Is there a common pain point in your industry that has been alleviated thanks to working with location data and spatial analysis?

Demand-side pricing. When forecasting rents all you ever hear about in real estate is the supply side of the equation: how many buildings will be built? How much vacant office space is available? The data tells us that demand (things like population and employment) not supply is the primary drives of rents.

What recent Location Intelligence use case inspired you and why?

I love this one because it’s so intuitive: data scientists at Clorox used weather data to boost sales of Burt’s Bees lip balm. Apparently when the wind blows from the North at seven miles per hour or more combined with a drop in temperature they buy digital advertisements to advertise the lip balm in that weather zone. Using this strategy they took Burt’s Bees from the # 5 lip balm in the U.S. to the 2nd best seller in under 10 years.

Wenfei Xu | Data Scientist

CARTO Locations Presentation: From Simple to Decadent Analytics: Making a Data Streams Layer Cake

What underrated aspect of location intelligence do you wish received more attention in your industry?

Spatial data science! There's a spatial component to analytics across all industries; however spatial is special and the expertise to understand spatial problems is currently fairly limited to pockets of academia and industry research groups.

Is there a common pain point in your industry that has been alleviated thanks to working with location data and spatial analysis?

Location data and spatial data science can be an extremely useful performance management tool for the public sector and city governments if they were applied more frequently. Cities are dynamic across space and time. Government agencies can improve their effectiveness by using more spatiotemporal tools to calibrate different aspects of urban welfare ranging from urban health to human mobility to dynamic land use.

What recent Location Intelligence use case inspired you and why?

I love the DoIT Chicago's food inspection study which looked at how the city can partner with data scientists to improve the city's the food inspection process and potentially prevent thousands of food-borne illnesses. The researchers created a model to predict which food venues were most likely to fail a health inspection. They used all open-source data and were able to demonstrate that their model would have found 14% more failing establishments in the first month of inspections.