Motionworks Placecast™ by Date provides hourly visits and occupancy at a Motionworks Place or Region for the average week each month since 2019. These insights are produced with the Motionworks Population Intelligence Platform. Placecast™ by Date is best used for investigating trends in counts of activities through time. Dimensions of the data include two key concepts when measuring activity at a place:

Visits to a Motionworks Place or Region are counted when an individual arrives at the place and left after what is determined to be a significant amount of time. The threshold which defines the amount of dwell time at the place required to constitute a visit is included in the field activities_dwell_threshold.
Occupancy at a Motionworks Place or Region reports the average number of persons present on average over the time-period reported regardless of when they arrived or how long they stayed.

Consider two examples:

The first is a gas station where the number of visits reported over an hour may be significantly larger than the Occupancy or average number of people at the location at any one time.
The opposite end of the spectrum may be an office building where people may arrive in a wave in the morning, recording many visits over a few hours with minimal visits for the rest of the day. However, the occupancy will grow with visits in the morning but then stay at a significant level throughout the work day.

Data Dimensions

Frequency Published monthly.
Geographic coverage Summarizes activities for residents of the U.S. for Motionworks Places and Regions.
Zone systems Not applicable. No zone systems are used in reporting data in this schema.
Date availability Monthly data since 2019.
Latency Data are finalized 30 days after the close of the month. For example, by 31 January 2022, data for December 2022 will be released.
Special Note Some places may return NULL values in the measurement fields for certain hours. Measurement during these hours are being suppressed at these places for privacy purposes.

Research Preview Fields

This dataset includes visit segmentation fields (visits_guests, visits_neighbors, visits_workers, and their corresponding occupancy and dwell time metrics) that are provided as Research Preview data. These fields offer valuable insights into visit composition patterns when analyzed across larger place sets or longer time periods, but users should be aware of their differences:

Aggregate Analysis Strength: These fields may provide meaningful insights when aggregating across multiple places, larger geographic areas, or extended time periods.
Individual Place Limitations: At the individual place and specific hour/day level, these fields may contain significant noise and should not be considered as precise as the total visits and occupancy metrics.
Validation Level: These fields undergo different validation processes than our standard metrics and are intended for exploratory analysis and trend identification.
Ongoing Development: These segmentation capabilities represent active areas of methodological development and refinement.
Recommended Use: Best suited for understanding general visit patterns, comparative analysis across place types, and identifying broad behavioral trends rather than precise visit counts for specific times and locations.

For applications requiring the highest precision and reliability, we recommend using the total visits, occupancy, and dwell time metrics, which undergo our full validation and verification processes.

Schema

Name	Description	Type	Example
place_id	Unique and persistent identifier of this place or region defined by a data collection polygon (also sometimes called point or place of interest).	string	275640
year	The year these monthly metrics are summarized, labeled using ISO 8601 with a four-digit year: `yyyy`.	integer	2022
month	The month of the year these monthly metrics are summarized where 1 = January, ... 12 = December	integer	5
day_type	An identifier of the day type that the metrics are summarizing where 1 = Weekday (Monday - Thursday), 2 = Friday, 3 = Saturday, and 4 = Sunday.	integer	1
hour	Local time hour of the day that the metrics are summarizing where 0 = 00:00 - 00:59, 1 = 01:00 - 01:59, ... 23 = 23:00 - 23:59.	integer	0
days	The number of days included in the aggregation. For example, if `year` = 2022, `month` = 10 and `day_type` = 4, then `days` is 5 because there are 5 Sundays in October of 2022.	integer	5
visits	Total visits arriving at the place on average during the identified hour of the week. A visit is an activity with a measured dwell time at a place greater than or equal to `activities_dwell_threshold`	number (float)
visits_age05plus	Total visits for persons aged 5 or older (5 plus) arriving at the place on average during the identified hour of the week.	number (float)
visits_age18plus	Total visits for persons aged 18 or older (18 plus) arriving at the place on average during the identified hour of the week.	number (float)
visits_guests	[Research Preview] Total visits for persons arriving at the place, who neither work at the place nor live in the immediate neighborhood, on average during the identified hour of the week. This number excludes passengers arriving at Commercial Airports.	number (float)
visits_departures	Total visits for passengers arriving at Commercial Airports land-side who will depart from the airport via a flight, on average during the identified hour of the week. If the place is not an airport, the value is null.	number (float)
visits_transfers	Total visits for passengers arriving at Commercial Airports via a flight and will also depart from the airport via a flight, on average during the identified hour of the week. If the place is not an airport, the value is null.	number (float)
visits_arrivals	Total visits for passengers arriving at Commercial Airports via a flight but will depart from the airport land-side on average during the identified hour of the week. If the place is not an airport, the value is null.	number (float)
visits_neighbors	[Research Preview] Total visits for persons arriving at the place who live in the immediate neighborhood on average during the identified hour of the week. This number excludes passengers arriving at Commercial Airports.	number (float)
visits_workers	[Research Preview] Total visits for persons arriving at the place who work at the place on average during the identified hour of the week. This number excludes passengers arriving at Commercial Airports.	number (float)
occupancy	The average number of persons present in the place during the identified hour of the week.	number (float)
occupancy_age05plus	The average number of persons aged 5 or older (5 plus) present in the place during the identified hour of the week.	number (float)
occupancy_age18plus	The average number of persons aged 18 or older (18 plus) present in the place during the identified hour of the week.	number (float)
occupancy_guests	[Research Preview] The average number of persons present in the place who neither work at the place nor live in the immediate neighborhood, during the identified hour of the week. This number excludes passengers at Commercial Airports.	number (float)
occupancy_departures	The average number of passengers present at Commercial Airports, who have arrived at the airport land-side but will depart from the airport via a flight, during the identified hour of the week.	number (float)
occupancy_transfers	The average number of passengers present at a Commercial Airport, who have arrived at the airport via a flight and will also depart from the airport via a flight, during the identified hour of the week.	number (float)
occupancy_arrivals	The average number of passengers present at Commercial Airports, who have arrived at the airport via a flight but will depart from the airport land-side, during the identified hour of the week.	number (float)
occupancy_neighbors	[Research Preview] The average number of persons present in the place who live in the immediate neighborhood, during the identified hour of the week. This number excludes passengers at Commercial Airports.	number (float)
occupancy_workers	[Research Preview] The average number of persons present in the place, who work at the place, during the identified hour of the week. This number excludes passengers at Commercial Airports.	number (float)
visits_avg_dwell	The average dwell time (in hours) for persons arriving at the place, who neither work at the place nor live in the immediate neighborhood, on average during the identified hour of the week. This number excludes passengers arriving at Commercial Airports.	number (float)
visits_avg_dwell_departures	The average dwell time (in hours) for passengers present at Commercial Airports, who have arrived at the airport land-side but will depart from the airport via a flight, during the identified hour of the week.	number (float)
visits_avg_dwell_transfers	The average dwell time (in hours) for passengers present at a Commercial Airport, who have arrived at the airport via a flight and will also depart from the airport via a flight, during the identified hour of the week.	number (float)
visits_avg_dwell_arrivals	The average dwell time (in hours) for passengers present at Commercial Airports, who have arrived at the airport via a flight but will depart from the airport land-side, during the identified hour of the week.	number (float)
visits_avg_dwell_neighbors	[Research Preview] The average dwell time (in hours) for persons present in the place who live in the immediate neighborhood, during the identified hour of the week. This number excludes passengers at Commercial Airports.	number (float)
visits_avg_dwell_workers	[Research Preview] The average dwell time (in hours) for persons present in the place, who work at the place, during the identified hour of the week. This number excludes passengers at Commercial Airports.	number (float)
visits_dwell_threshold	The dwell time threshold (in minutes) for the place. Activities measuring a dwell time less than this threshold at this place are counted as `dropoffs`, and activities measuring a dwell time greater than or equal to this threshold at this place are counted as `visits`. Values for Places are maximum of 15 minutes.	number(float)
dropoffs	Total weekly dropoffs at the place. A dropoff is an activity with a measured dwell time at the place less than ‘visits_dwell_threshold‘.	number(float)
passbys	Total weekly pass-bys of the place. A pass-by has zero dwell time at the place and is NOT an activity. They do not count as a dropoff or visit (or stay).	number(float)
activities	The sum of weekly visits and dropoffs.	number(float)
exposures	The sum of weekly visits, dropoffs, and passbys.	number(float)