Site selection and location intelligence
Choosing where to locate a store, depot or facility is a high-stakes decision, and location intelligence grounds it in data. This guide covers the external data behind site selection and how to combine it.
Why location intelligence matters
The wrong site is an expensive, long-lived mistake. Location intelligence combines external data to estimate demand, accessibility and competition before committing, turning intuition into evidence.
The data that drives it
- Catchment and footfall: who is nearby and who passes.
- Demographics: population and spending context.
- Competition: nearby competitor and complementary places.
- Accessibility: transport, parking and travel time.
Bringing it together
The value is in combining layers consistently: catchment defined by travel time, demographics within it, footfall and competition nearby. This demands consistent geography and geocoding across sources.
Common use cases
Retail and hospitality expansion, logistics and depot siting, branch-network planning, and investment due diligence.
Sourcing considerations
Footfall and mobility inputs must be aggregated and anonymised. Coverage and methodology vary, and combining open and commercial sources usually wins. Provenance and licensing matter for investment decisions.
In a managed model
A managed partner can assemble catchment, demographic, footfall and competition layers into a consistent location-intelligence dataset.
Defining catchment properly
The most common site-selection error is a crude radius. A catchment is better defined by how people actually travel, drive-time or walk-time isochrones, within which demographics, footfall and competition are then measured. Layering these on consistent geography turns a location decision from intuition into evidence, and makes comparisons between candidate sites fair.
Combining layers and respecting privacy
Location intelligence is fundamentally a data-integration task: catchment, demographics, footfall and competition must align on consistent geocoding. Footfall and mobility inputs derive from individuals and must be aggregated and anonymised. Combining open and commercial sources, with documented provenance, usually beats any single dataset for a decision as expensive and long-lived as a new site.
- Location intelligence turns site decisions into evidence.
- Combine catchment, demographics, footfall, competition and accessibility.
- Consistent geography and geocoding across sources is essential.
- Footfall and mobility inputs must be aggregated and anonymised.
Sources & further reading
- Eurostat and national statistics: demographics.
- Open and commercial POI and footfall providers.
- Open Geospatial Consortium: spatial standards.
- EUR-Lex: Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR).
We assemble catchment, demographic, footfall and competition layers into one dataset. Get a no-obligation quote.