The Intelligence Spine: A Guided Tour of Our Data Sources

At Place Signals, we believe that the quality of any location intelligence is only as good as the data that feeds it. When you look at a score for market saturation, workforce strength, or community resilience, you aren’t just looking at a proprietary number—you’re looking at the synthesis of billions of data points gathered from the most reliable public and open-source repositories in the world.

We call this "The Intelligence Spine." It is the structural foundation of our scoring engines, designed for transparency, high resolution, and analytical rigor. In this post, we’re taking the lid off our data warehouse to show analysts, developers, and site selectors exactly where the numbers come from.

1. The Demographic Foundation

Before understanding a market's future, you must understand its people. We anchor our demographic scores in high-fidelity federal datasets that provide the "who" and "how much."

• American Community Survey (ACS): Our primary lens for population, household structure, education levels, and housing affordability. We use the 5-year estimates to ensure statistical stability at the census tract and block group levels.
• BEA Regional Economic Accounts: While the Census tells us about people, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) tells us about the economy. We integrate County GDP and regional macro-economic trends to identify areas of genuine economic growth.
• IRS SOI (Statistics of Income): For high-resolution wealth analysis, we look to the IRS. This allows us to map ZIP-level income distributions and wealth concentration with a level of precision that traditional surveys often miss.

2. The Business & Competition Engine

Understanding "supply" is critical for site selection. We map the competitive landscape by combining traditional administrative records with modern, open-source geospatial data.

• County Business Patterns (CBP) & ZBP: These datasets from the Census Bureau provide the definitive count of establishments by industry (NAICS). We use this to calculate competitor density and supply-side saturation.
• Overture Maps & OpenStreetMap (OSM): For the "ground truth" of what’s actually on a corner, we utilize Overture and OSM. These provide global Point of Interest (POI) density, amenity mapping, and building footprints.
• Business Formation Statistics (BFS): We don't just look at who is there now; we look at who is coming. BFS data allows us to track startup momentum and future business applications in real-time.
• NPI Registry: In the healthcare sector, the National Provider Identifier (NPI) registry gives us high-fidelity data on provider density, specialties, and practice locations.

3. Labor & Workforce Intelligence

A business is only as strong as its ability to hire. We analyze the "work" in "live-work-play" using deep-tier labor data.

• BLS QCEW (Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages): This is the gold standard for employment and wage data. It provides the industry-specific labor market strength signals that power our workforce scores.
• LEHD LODES: The Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES) is our "commute engine." It tells us where people live versus where they work, allowing us to calculate daytime populations and trade area draw.

4. Risk, Health & Infrastructure

Modern site selection requires looking beyond the balance sheet to environmental and social risk.

• FEMA National Risk Index (NRI): We incorporate natural hazard risk—from flooding to wildfires—and community resilience scores to help users understand long-term physical risks.
• CDC PLACES: This provides neighborhood-level health indicators, offering a window into the wellness and chronic condition landscape of a community.
• FCC Broadband Map: In a digital-first world, access is everything. We track digital infrastructure quality to identify "connected" markets.
• HUD USPS Vacancy: By tracking quarterly vacancy and address churn, we can identify real estate pressure and neighborhoods in transition.

5. Mobility & Accessibility

How people move through a space defines its commercial value. We use movement proxies to determine foot traffic and accessibility.

• GTFS Transit Feeds: We ingest General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data from hundreds of agencies to calculate public transit frequency and proximity.
• DOT Traffic Counts: Using roadway movement data from various Departments of Transportation, we create proxies for vehicle volume and secondary foot traffic potential.

Roadmap: What’s Coming Next

The Intelligence Spine is constantly growing. Our data engineering team is currently working on integrating several new "Realities" into the platform:

• VIIRS Night Lights: Satellite-derived nighttime imagery to track human activity and urbanization intensity from space.
• NOAA Climate Normals: Long-term climate averages to enhance our cost-volatility and environmental risk models.
• USDA Food Access: Integrating the Food Access Research Atlas to better understand "food deserts" and grocery accessibility in our social context scores.

Explore the Data

Transparency is our core value. We believe that by showing you the spine of our intelligence, you can make more confident, data-driven decisions.

Ready to see these signals in action?

• Explore the Data Catalog
• Read our Full Methodology