Best Geospatial Data Companies

Geospatial data has moved far beyond just mapping and visualisation locations. Today, it is influencing how organisations take their decisions regarding where to expand, how to allocate resources efficiently, and how to understand markets at a local level. As more and more teams start taking on location-based analysis, geospatial data companies are becoming a strategic partner in converting raw geography into actionable insights.

Yet not all geospatial data providers serve the same purpose. Some focus on mapping infrastructure, others on mobility, demographics, or real-world places. Understanding these differences is essential before choosing a provider.

What Do Geospatial Data Companies Do?

Geospatial data companies collect, process, as well as distribute data attached to physical locations. Their products describe what is happening in the world:  places, people, movement, and environments in organised, structured formats with which to analyse a problem at a much larger scale.

Depending on their specialisation, these companies provide:

Points of interest data for commercial and public locations

Property parcels and building footprints 

Population and demographic indicators

Road networks and navigation data 

Mobility and foot traffic patterns

Environmental and climate data

Some providers focus on supplying clean datasets, while other platforms combine data with visualisation and analytics tools.

Top Five Geospatial Data Companies

Here are five companies with distinct approaches to geospatial data that suit different user types and usability. 

SafeGraph

SafeGraph specialises in detailed, high-quality data on real-world places. It also helps teams analyse market behaviour, retail, real estate, location-based markets, focusing on points of interest. The data provided is the most accurate, consistent, and freshly updated, rather than broad but shallow coverage.

Esri 

Esri is famous for its GIS software ArcGIS and spatial analysis tools. It offers a rich environment for mapping, modeling, and managing geospatial data from various sources. Esri is designed specifically for use by governments, researchers, and enterprises that need advanced spatial analysis rather than standalone datasets.

Mapbox 

Mapbox focuses on mapping, navigation, and mobility data. Its products are frequently used in applications that require routing, traffic awareness, and custom map design. It is also well suited to logistics, transportation, and consumer-facing digital products.

US Census Bureau

Data from the public sector continues to be central to the geospatial analysis model. The US Census Bureau

offers demographic and population information that supports planning, research, and policy decisions. It is free and authoritative data, but it often requires additional processing before it can be practical for business use.

CARTO

CARTO integrates spatial analytics tools and the information from a mixture of multiple service providers. It appeals to the interest of those organisations that are looking for a unified location intelligence platform that supports analysis, visualisation, and collaboration across teams.

What to Look for in a Geospatial Data Provider

Choosing a geospatial data provider/company depends less on the brand recognition and more on its actual fit for your specific use. Key criteria to consider while choosing the right data provider includes:

Type of data needed

Some projects focus on accurate place-level data location, while other firms rely on mobility patterns, demographics, or environmental indicators.

Accuracy and update frequency

Outdated or inconsistent data can undermine analysis performance. the frequency of refresh and data validation varies widely with different Providers.

Ease of Integration 

Data should fit smoothly into existing analytics workflows and tools without excessive preprocessing and cleaning.

Platform versus raw data

Some teams benefit from full featured platforms, while others prefer clean datasets they can analyse independently.

In many cases, organisations combine data from multiple providers and places  to meet different analytical requirements of the enterprises.

Choosing What suits your Organisation

Geospatial data companies play a central role in how organisations understand and act on location based insights. One important thing to keep in mind is that the right provider is not the one with the most data, but the one whose products align perfectly with your requirements and enhance your decision making process in the right direction.

Rural residents don't have the luxury of staying home as much as North Carolina's urban residents, a study compiled from smartphone data shows.

The trend holds through nationwide, according to the study from SafeGraph, which analyzed data from 45 million smartphones.

The study used location data to determine the most common overnight location of "anonymous devices," to gauge how often people were going out.

Major metros like Charlotte and Raleigh show the highest percent of homebodies, with 43 and 45 percent of residents not leaving the house.  But rural pockets like Duplin, Bladen and Robeson counties had less than 30 percent of residents staying home.

Unlike previous studies, which ranked communities by distance traveled, this study did not differentiate between walking over to a neighbors house a few blocks away or driving 10 miles.

"We think this is a useful metric because one does not need to travel long distances to undermine social-distancing and enable viral transmission," SafeGraph states in its methodology.  "It also enables better comparisons between rural, suburban, and urban areas, even though the former generally travel greater distances for essential activities like grocery shopping."

There's a whole host of reasons why sheltering in place is less of an option for folks in rural communities — the population has lower incomes and higher rates of poverty, meaning families are less able to stock up up on food and must make more frequent trips for supplies.  Public Health officials have also predicted the pandemic could hit rural regions harder than metros because hospitals there are less equipped to handle surges.  And folks in this communities already have a lower life expectancy than their urban counterparts.

Check out the full data set here.

Contact Raleigh editor Leigh Tauss at [email protected].

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- By Phil Siarri , Nuadox -

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco-based analytics company SafeGraph Inc. recently unveiled a new dashboard. The “Shelter in Place Dashboard” shows data about US population movement from recent months based on SafeGraph Social Distancing Metrics data. More specifically, the dashboard indicates the percent of the population staying home (sheltering in place) each day.