Visualize event impact with Polygons for attendance-based events
We’ve expanded our polygons feature to include attended events such as parades and marathons
At PredictHQ, one of our most critical pieces of data is our venue information, which tells us when a game, concert or show is taking place at a stadium, arena or concert hall. But there are many attended events that take place over a large area versus a specific venue, such as a music festival, a parade, or marathon.
Polygons for attended events provide the coordinates of parade routes, marathons, music festivals, and more in the geo field in the API, and also show on the map view in our web application, Control Center.
A polygon for a marathon or parade shows the route of the event. Polygons for festivals show the area impacted by the festival. This can help companies avoid locations that are going to be congested due to these events. For example companies delivering food or rideshare companies will want to avoid these locations to avoid road closures and congestion.
These are often big events that can also impact retail and accommodation businesses nearby, bringing in more people to watch a marathon and crowds of spectators who may drive up demand. These events can have both an incremental (positive or increase) and a decremental (decrease) impact depending on the event and your business type. Either way, businesses want to make sure they allow for the changes in demand.
In the fall of 2021, we launched Polygons for School Holidays and Severe Weather. With more than 760k polygons in our system today, we’re excited to be expanding this feature to include polygons for attended events. This release supports festivals, parades and marathons, and currently includes the United States and Canada. If you are looking for polygon information outside of these geos, reach out and let us know!
Now let’s take a look at how this release can be used to drive greater profitability.
Polygons indicate geographic impact and real-world situational awareness
Many types of events don’t occur neatly at a point on a map. Area events impact a geographic area such as a region, state or an entire country. Polygon events tend to impact a specific area within a city, state or a country. Along with severe weather events, with polygons you can now track attended events that are spread across an area, such as marathons and festivals.
Festival example – the Garden Grove Strawberry Festival
Here are a few more examples of polygons for attended events:
NYC Pride Parade - 2,000,000 attendees
Chicago Pride Parade - 1,000,000 attendees
Grand Floral Parade - 500,000 attendees
PGE Solve Starlight Parade - 325,000 attendees
Atlanta BeltLine Lantern Parade - 70,000 attendees
How to boost profitability with Polygons for attended events
For delivery companies, more accurate geospatial information for impactful events drives more accurate demand predictions and estimated times of arrival. Events that span across vast areas disrupt traffic patterns and slow down delivery times. Advanced knowledge of the exact geo-location of these events drive the ability to position drivers in ways that will minimize this disruption and ensure timely deliveries.
And for companies such as retailers, hotels, and restaurants, knowing an event’s exact route means they can plan around impacted areas to take advantage of increased foot traffic:
boost staff coverage to meet increased demand at stores along the event route
partner with event planners to build brand awareness via sponsorship or cross-promotion
plan ahead to ensure suppliers deliver inventory before roads are blocked off
For example, you can use our location insights feature to set up locations for your different stores or hotels, and then see what events are impacting those locations.
Under the hood, our polygon events use geoJSON information to show the area impacted by an event. Our polygon events include line string, polygon or multipolygon type events. Get started with our technical documentation on geographic information and polygons for more details.
