Inside Job: Location Intelligence for Indoor Maps
Indoor maps often direct users to emergency exits which has limited our context of mapping to external geographical spaces. With the rise of Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) however the field of data visualization is turning inward to pioneer new paths to purchase with indoor maps.
Situm a member of Telefónica’s Open Future initiative and known as the “GPS for indoor” start-up analyzes indoor traffic for various sectors using location intelligence. Despite an exponential rise in mobile purchasing the Department of Commerce reports that 90 percent of retail purchases are transacted offline which means managing in-store traffic is crucial to maintaining a competitive edge. But aside from providing directions for customers what exactly can IPS offer? Well as we learned during a recent collaboration with Situm the answer is a lot.
Situm and CARTO partnered to create an application visualizing the flow of foot-traffic inside a shopping mall. Checkout the image below. Notice the darker points? Those points indicate high volumes of consumer traffic throughout the indoor mall:
Additionally users of the application can answer crucial business questions for strategic store planning management and security based on operating hours amplified by the temporal scrub bar.
The core technology behind Situm is a multi-sensor data fusion algorithm created during seven years of research and development in mobile robotics using state of the art AI techniques. All the information that a smartphone is able to capture is used to improve location accuracy and detect a user’s or object’s position.
Think about it. There was a time when businesses were satisfied with a certain level of mapping behavior. For these organizations using isolines or other types of LDS was especially beneficial in determining where to place malls hospitals or additional operations. Businesses could establish how long it took to go to various location points via walking or driving using spatial data for strategic analysis and intelligence. This type of intelligence was essential for setting competitive prices optimizing your distribution channels or knowing your target audience.
But what if you could take those insights a step further inside your establishment? What if you could offer your clients optimum analysis on traditionally unseen patterns and trends? With Situm and CARTO you can go from location (data) to intelligence (decisions).
Situm’s positioning service is open for a free trial to anyone who registers. And CARTO which can be connected to Situm is uniquely situated to support the visualization of indoor positioning data through the enhancement of location intelligence.
Happy indoor mapping!
