July 2022 Summaries

Sistema.bio is a company that produces and installs biodigesters for smallholder farmers, turning animal manure into fertilizer and biogas, promoting sustainability through the Circular Economy. They have installed over 35,000 biodigesters across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, benefiting over 220,000 people. Sistema.bio uses Location Intelligence with CARTO to optimize their field operations, visualize existing and pending installations, and analyze customer data for market strategy. The company aims to leverage CARTO's Analytics Toolbox to further enhance their operations, including route optimization, hot spot identification, and Geomarketing analytics.

Migrating from PostgreSQL to BigQuery for geospatial analytics offers several benefits, including scalability, performance, and security. The traditional database approach has limitations, such as a lack of compute-storage separation, complexity when scaling, sharing limitations, and high costs associated with storing large spatial datasets. Cloud data warehouses like BigQuery provide unparalleled levels of scalability, performance, and security. With the Spatial Extension for BigQuery, users can unlock a toolbox of over 100 user-defined functions and routines for advanced spatial analytics. By following a step-by-step guide using CARTO, organizations can easily migrate their geospatial analysis workflows to BigQuery, simplifying data sharing, and reducing costs. The process involves setting up the spatial data infrastructure in BigQuery, importing data from PostgreSQL, spatially clustering data tables, accelerating queries with the BI Engine, sharing data with external users, and performing spatial analysis and visualization using CARTO.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a unique challenge in terms of its rapid spread and volatility, necessitating fast and dynamic strategy planning and decision-making that relies on accurate local and temporally detailed data. To address this need, CARTO has teamed up with ZOE to develop a blueprint for epidemic tracking using spatial analytics and visualization software. The system consists of three key visualizations: COVID infection and vaccination rates, Omicron spread tracker, and local vaccination predictions. These visualizations aim to provide actionable insights for health planning by enabling users to visualize the spread of the virus, identify hotspots, and track vaccination efforts in a geographically detailed manner. By leveraging location intelligence, decision-makers can make informed strategies that are dynamic and responsive to changing patterns in the pandemic.

Exploratory Data Analysis: UK retail centres is a dataset developed by the Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) that provides insights into the characteristics and functions of Retail Centres across the UK. The dataset contains spatial boundaries for Retail Centres, measures of supply vulnerability, online exposure, clone town measure, E-resilience, and hierarchical classification. An exploratory data analysis was conducted on this dataset using CARTO's Spatial Data Catalog, which revealed insights into retail centre sizes, population density, POI density, urbanity, internet usage, employees and workplaces, and population change. The analysis showed that Retail Centres vary significantly in size, with Regional Centres being the largest, while Small Local Centres have a greater likelihood of being found in rural areas. The dataset also revealed patterns in internet usage and employee numbers, as well as population change between 2015 and 2020. The findings of this exploratory data analysis can be used to inform retail strategy, economic planning, or development, such as the UK's regional "Levelling Up" agenda.

CTID Engineering & Technologies, a leading company in comprehensive engineering design services, aims to expand its offerings to include electric vehicle charging stations as part of its commitment to sustainability. To achieve this, they utilize CARTO's location-based dashboard for site selection and monitoring, which empowers their staff without requiring GIS or data science skills to tackle common business problems. The solution provides insights on EV charging point locations, sales, competitors, points of interest, and demographics, enabling CTID to plan and monitor the most optimal locations for electric vehicle charging stations. By leveraging Location Intelligence, CTID can predict the success of future sites, identify general areas for successful expansion, replicate high-performing locations, and compare site performance across their network.

The CARTO platform has recently released several exciting new features, including native support for spatial indexes across its different interfaces, which enables more performant geospatial analytics at a large scale. This enhancement allows users to unlock geospatial analytics for very large datasets, bringing radical savings in processing and rendering times. Additionally, Builder users can now load, visualize, and process tables, tilesets, and results from SQL queries that contain spatial indexes without the need for geometry data. The platform has also enhanced its point-and-click SQL analyses, cartographic capabilities, and interactive features, including custom breaks for color ramps, visibility of layers depending on the zoom level, and a more advanced color picker. Furthermore, users can now enrich their tables with features from Data Observatory subscriptions via the Data Explorer, and enterprise plans have been updated to include extended group sharing and customization capabilities. The platform has also launched CARTO for Retail, a cloud-native analytics platform designed specifically for retailers to perform geospatial analytics at scale.

The rollout of 5G technology is expected to bring numerous benefits, including enhanced mobile broadband, improved connectivity in rural areas, and support for IoT improvements as well as mission-critical communications across various industries. Location Intelligence plays a crucial role in the successful launch and expansion of 5G networks by telecommunications providers, as it enables them to make informed decisions about infrastructure placement, connection quality, and network optimization. The use of spatial data analysis and mapping is essential to mitigate challenges such as signal interference and ensure reliable, secure, and interoperable connections. Telecom companies are leveraging Location Intelligence to optimize their 5G network planning, deployment, and management, with applications including service qualification, site selection, and smart city development, ultimately fostering innovative use cases that bridge the gap between smartphones, wearables, utility management, and self-driving vehicles.

The city of Berlin has undergone significant changes in post-COVID tourism, with popular areas such as Alexanderplatz experiencing major increases in both Sentiment Scores and Footfall Index values. In contrast, lesser-known attractions like Monbijou Park have become increasingly popular among tourists seeking green spaces to relax. The pandemic has also led to a shift in Sentiment across districts, with some areas experiencing significant decreases in popularity. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that businesses have closed down in certain areas, resulting in a decrease in Points of Interest. CARTO's Location Intelligence platform provides advanced tools for analyzing spatial patterns and identifying hotspots, allowing organizations to make data-driven decisions on site selection, market expansion, and competitive intelligence.