question regarding from the places documentation:
We attribute visits to the containing element i.e. the indoor mall or airport, and not to any individual tenants. We believe this is the most accurate option given the limitations of GPS inside such structures (e.g., indoor malls, casinos, hotels).```
Is there any way to detect when this is done without manually looking into the visit patterns for a place id and its parent? We just realized in our analysis that we were missing out on this as some POI that were inside malls were missing any visits at all.
@Guy_Columbia I think if the parent_safegraph_place_id is not blank then this is done. In other words, if you see any rows with a parent ID.
oh I see! so if a parent place_id exists then this means that all visits are logged under the parent?
this doesn’t seem correct for strip malls though?
Yeah it seems that stores in strip malls would have their own individual polygons so this wouldn’t be applicable. But did you see any strip mall with a parent ID?
yea, these POIs are associated with visitors and have a parent safegraph id as well
@Guy_Columbia @Ruowei_Yang_UM_Baltimore you are correct that strips malls are handled in a special way where in those cases we report visits to the individual stores. The goal is when the POI is inside another POI structure, visits are reported to the parent. but otherwise if the POI has its own external entrance and is not enclosed, then we will report visits directly to that POI.
What exactly are you trying to do when you say “detect” these cases without manually looking at parent sgpids?
@Ryan_Fox_Squire_SafeGraph we were looking at visits to certain top categories such as department stores and realized that there were stores in the core places dataset (such as Macys, Sears, etc.) that had no traffic to them. Previously we’d effectively been ignoring them since we were not looking at the traffic on the parent place id. The solution we implemented was just to pull from the parent place id in the case when the place id itself has no visits in patterns and a parent place id. I was mainly wondering whether there was a more explicit way to tell from the core places dataset whether we should expect to see visits data[without having to join onto patterns to see at what level the visits were being logged at].
just to confirm, is there any scenario in which a visit would count towards more than one POI in the weekly patterns data? is it true that visits only go towards the parent POI (for non strip malls) or only towards the child POI (for strip malls), or are they double counted in some scenarios?
@Pang_Wei_Koh_Stanford let me know if you figure that out
@Pang_Wei_Koh_Stanford @Guy_Columbia For strip/outdoor malls (non-enclosing polygons) the visits will be attributed to both the parent and the child POIs. For indoor malls and airports (enclosing polygons) the visits will be attributed to the parent POI only. However, unfortunately there is no definite way to tell whether the parent POI is enclosing or non-enclosing.
thanks @Ruowei_Yang_UM_Baltimore. do you know how visits to other types of POIs with parent_id’s and shared_polygons handled?
@Pang_Wei_Koh_Stanford I assume non-enclosing is the default, and strip mall is an exception, so generally visits should be reflected to both parent and child POIs.
hi @Ruowei_Yang_UM_Baltimore, we seem to be finding that most parent relationships are for indoor malls (enclosing polygons), and that the visits there are attributed both to the parent and the child POIs
@Pang_Wei_Koh_Stanford please provide some examples (name, safegrahph_place_id) so we can investigate, thanks
and here is a list of parent ids, where the first entry is the plt_idx
1 sg:0f8cb5b78c3a4096b37518314fb7a17a
2 sg:0b5906f458ef445cbf3b2ee5db149a3b
3 sg:3ff59933fbf744ab888dbaf30d78edfb
4 sg:b71ba63267584b96aa332ac59dd13b30
5 sg:69d0607a2d3b411691203fa513cfb4d6
6 sg:0bd4ad2385304a11a47ac15ac0b7c50f
7 sg:f6c8fd41aa5b474e81f78342af48203b
8 sg:2754f96c6a6745659f00e425fa4ed50c
9 sg:caed9c0c118947f3969749b6918d489f
10 sg:9d6071c9b2cf45589e8a45a43b80645a
11 sg:2d7e3f1fe1ab44d48bdcd4e53a87b73f
12 sg:b17360771a8e4fa2883fa842970f772d
13 sg:ae961c438de644619c1cb0ed5177c08c
14 sg:faceb9ba7d2f40d6bf7aeb8223cc60b2
15 sg:3cb7afbd9686435b8f9bc1c33bb80841
16 sg:c378b2bd998c4c3589a98b06f5c0c3e5
17 sg:c458c5517d254678af78f0827b0f23c8
18 sg:db23bad5aa8143dfa5c3918f690a0d7f
19 sg:d885d46723d047a487980e4bea6dc3d9
20 sg:53e91094ee724c11a29ad9c41ecd3c85
21 sg:43f28f9cda1e4e438bae5dca7cbc7804
22 sg:796309d5ad6343a591f475d51bf63e4c
23 sg:1a02fc6f5de843bba60f39ddfb389317
24 sg:e804041c91f14b268a48716e63a5bbd4
25 sg:039c3665136d448c8531d6bbb1682d34
26 sg:1510f0fdc08f4dad81f05769a243d828
27 sg:5bcbf7ad884242bc89ea86c42a031808
28 sg:83a4546274c74fa0b833a7c42344249e
29 sg:019d6f3fde114d77a3f533fd55edf075
30 sg:bee8fdc7b935419b96e9f50135e79f20
31 sg:0dfba03ea6f7461bab8dd7bd8b0c8955
32 sg:19e712b09fa64505967911453c15888a
33 sg:456fad80da09476fbf9e68f8574c4d1e
34 sg:1614fcf9e6874d3e87cd4854b42b8bb7
35 sg:9bfd1d04e44b47e08f119f5fbfe30d6e
36 sg:66e4d57ba5b74a188c97736d9aae33c9
37 sg:d00bfe8004984f67b9755332321a4457
38 sg:21cc936f4a40443eaf44635c914a341c
39 sg:98bbf71bd15f4d8f95bafdf843950d42
40 sg:9bdbbd39714346c1ba37613ef6a2af6c
41 sg:cbcd650e66f5468a87768e34d104070e
42 sg:8f625ff5cbba45ae8cd56b9cda1cd75a
43 sg:6781e2fc0e9e4ecc907995cda7ef923e
44 sg:bc971a14d93d4090849c4c23d31b586d
45 sg:cfcfe30f90c540a29ba723059b13ebcd
46 sg:941081d47e4e4a1d8b8bbfeecde5c5be
47 sg:ac0eb875838f4de3b8d657a52894008b
48 sg:1200c05b75344af18e879853a92d1fda
49 sg:bc64954300f2483db22d2a27f0fa045e
50 sg:aa1c4c27353a418988d39e46a192d14c
51 sg:29b9d06c60cf46f0b1463c9e7e4cc66e
52 sg:1b290af2c09d4b1b93ecbd6ffbb08048
53 sg:3b6d1cdd04c14c89b498b05acffde2d9```
@Pang_Wei_Koh_Stanford If you check the actual addresses to these places you’ll find they are either strip malls or outdoor malls — meaning the individual stores within these malls have their own external entrances, therefore these parent malls are NOT enclosing. From the list you gave, I didn’t find one instance that is an indoor mall. Please see the FAQ regarding this HERE.