Quick question about trip chaining--is there some way to figure out what business visits are related to the same trip from the origin CBG?

Questions & Help
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Quick question about trip chaining–is there some way to figure out what business visits are related to the same trip from the origin CBG?

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@Jack_Lindsay_Kraken1 I was wondering if safegraph might have some sort of trip chaining tracking capability?

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Hi @Anne_Hudson_MIT, sorry for the delay in response! Sure, there are a few different chains in SafeGraph data. You have thinks like Same Day brand in patterns data that lets you know where people typically go after visit another POI.

For CBGs in particular,

Neighborhood patterns will show visits to each CBG (Neighborhood Patterns | SafeGraph Docs)

Weekly and monthly patterns also has visitor_home_cbg etc that you can group by to find out which CBGs people are coming from (Neighborhood Patterns | SafeGraph Docs)

If you tell me a bit about your exact project, I might be able to offer some more detail on chaining (specifically the granularity you are looking for)

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Hi Jack–Thanks very much for getting back to me! We are attempting to understand what draws individuals to a ‘cluster’ of businesses and so are trying to isolate trips from an origin to a destination

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[sorry–got cut off] ‘cluster.’ Currently it seems that each separate trip to a business is linked to its home CBG, so we could be seeing the same ‘trip’ linked back to the home CBG even if it is part of a chain of trips in the same cluster

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So we were hoping to discount trips if they are part of an on-going trip as opposed to a one-off trip from the home CBG to the business

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Hi @Anne_Hudson_MIT, I am sorry I am not sure I am following.

the home CBG is not changed very often, especially not in the span of a road trip (assuming things work as planned)

If you mean you are trying to track users as they go from point to point (i.e. beyond poi + same_day_related_brand), it will not be possible because that would break the anonymity of SafeGraph (you cant follow individual users).

You might be able to try linking same day brand to same day brand for a chain of suspected POI and use the home cbg to check and see if you can assume the visitors are the same, but that will likely be the extent of granularity you will reach using SafeGraph

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I know this likely seems very abstract, let me know if I can clarify anything please

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Hi Jack-- Much appreciated! That does indeed answer my question–we were hoping there might perhaps be some abstracted data on an individual’s full trip with different stops, but duly noted that that would indeed break the anonymity. Thanks again for your help!

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No problem and sorry it isn’t available! Good luck with your research and don’t hesitate to reach out again if you have any questions!