Maponics Ties Comprehensive “Walkability” Ratings to Real Life Geographies
White River Junction, Vermont (PRWEB) July 10, 2013 -- Maponics, a leader in geo-spatial data, today announced the release of new ratings that help businesses and consumers understand the walkability of neighborhoods, school attendance zones, subdivisions and other areas. The new Walkability™product analyzes not just access to amenities and walking routes, but takes into account additional key factors – such as street types, optimal routes, speed limits and intersection complexity – to offer real-life application and enhanced insight into the character of an area.
“Maponics’ Walkability data set is a giant step forward – pun intended – in giving consumers a true picture of a neighborhood,” said Darrin Clement, Maponics founder and CEO. “It’s one thing to have points of interest in an area – for recreation, for culture, for shopping and dining – but another thing altogether to understand how accessible they are. Walkability gives a geo-spatial meaning to the concept of ‘street smarts.’”
As an example of a Walkability rating, Michael Moshay, Vice President of Contextual Analytics, used a hypothetical street crowded with restaurants. If that street is a divided highway with four-way intersections and a speed limit of 45 miles per hour, he explained, it is less desirable to a pedestrian than if it is a local road with a speed limit of 25 miles per hour. The new Walkability rating takes into account all these variables and more, he said, including the accessibility of local points of interest and population density, which helps determine where a person is likely to start walking.
In addition, continued Moshay, the Walkability data set gives not only one overall rating, but also two others, relating to amenities and leisure. These three Walkability ratings help give a more nuanced picture of an area.
The areas rated for Walkability are defined by Maponics using “intelligent polygons” that apply boundaries to neighborhoods, subdivisions, school attendance zones and other real life geographies, previously understood solely as geographic coordinates, said Moshay. These polygons are used in a wide variety of web-based and mobile geofencing applications, including the world’s largest real estate portals.
The Walkability data set is part of the Maponics Context product suite, unveiled in January 2013, which applies highly sophisticated modeling to volumes of big data and conveys the results within Maponics’ intelligent polygons.
An even more holistic picture of specific geographies will emerge with planned additions to Context, said Clement, including more lifestyle and behavioral categories relating to daily and leisure activities, social sentiment, and environmental variables. Maponics recently added a School Ratings data set to Context, a data set which helps business owners, realtors, home-buyers and sellers assess and compare school quality using analysis of comprehensive data such as statewide school performance rankings, standardized math and reading test scores, and detailed school profiles applied to predefined geofences.
“Walkability is one more component in building a comprehensive picture of what is happening in a particular area,” said Moshay.
To learn more about Maponics Context, visit maponics.com, email info(at)maponics(dot)com or call (800) 762-5158.
About Maponics
Maponics is the market leader for comprehensive boundary databases and geospatial analytics that underpin today's location based services and analytics. Maponics creates geographic boundaries for areas where people spend their time and money, such as neighborhood boundaries, shopping boundaries, ZIP Code boundaries and school boundaries. Customers include many of today's best-known web, social media, mobile and real estate brands, including over 70% of the top real estate websites. These brands rely on Maponics to power ultra-local interactive search, mapping, tracking and ad targeting platforms, including Trulia®, ZipRealty™, LPS, RPR™, Fannie Mae®, Estately, Citysearch®, Century 21 Canada, Yellow Book USA®, infoUSA®, Zvents®, Zillow® and many others. The company is headquartered in Vermont. To find out more, visit maponics.com or call 1-800-762-5158.
Will Marlow, Maponics, http://www.maponics.com, 202-577-3350, [email protected]
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