VT Census Case Studies : Factual

Created and last modified by molfe on 02 Jan 2016

Brief Overall Description of the Dataset:

Factual has data sets about local place information, entertainment and information derived from government sources. Its core product is its Global Places data, which provides location data covering 65 million local businesses and points of interest in 50 countries. It also provides more in-depth data on restaurants, hotels, and doctors. Its platform includes tools to help developers map data across APIs and manage location data. The data is made available via API or full downloads.

Factual.com’s  system is built to work with all kinds of data, you can also filter by any column in the table. There are a couple downsides: queries are more complex compared to Google places.

Link: http://factual.com/

Date Inventory Completed: 7/23/2015

Screening

  • Is the data collected opinion-based?
  • Is the data collection recurring (must be collected at least annually)?
  • Is there data available for 2013?
  • Is the data collected at the property or housing unit level?
  • Can we access the data by August 15th?

Purpose

  • What is the purpose of the organization collecting the data?

Factual is a location platform that enables personalized and contextually relevant mobile experiences by enriching mobile location signals with definitive global data.

  • Why is it collected and how does the organization use it?

As an open data platform, it was developed to maximize data accuracy, transparency, and accessibility

  • Who else uses the data?

App developers

  • Who do they sell the data to?

Examples include:  Facebook Places and SpatialMatch


Method

  • What is the data collection method? 

Unknown

Varies by source

  • What is the type of data collected? 

Digital

  • If designed, who created the questions?

  • What is the raw source of the collected data (prior to any aggregation)? 

"Our real-time data stack is constantly processing new data contributions that flow in from millions of sources to update and improve the data on an ongoing basis. Factual partners are a key source of data as many of them provide edits and updates back to Factual. The data stack:

  1. Extracts both unstructured and structured data from the various different sources

  2. Cleans, standardizes, and canonicalizes the data

  3. Merges, de-dupes, and maps entities across the multiple sources”


Description

  • What is the general topic of the data (1-2 words)?

Points of interest

  • What are the earliest and latest dates for which data is available?

Current

  • Is data collected and available periodically?

Yes

  • How soon after a reference period ends can a data source be prepared and provided? 

“Real-time data stack builds and maintains data on a global scale”


Selectivity

  • What is the universe (e.g., population) that the data represents?

Location data covering 65 million local businesses and points of interest in 50 countries


Accessibility

  • How is the data accessed? 

It provides access to through web service APIs and reusable, customizable web applications.

https://factual.com/contact#free_api_access

  • Is it open data?

Yes

  • Any legal, regulatory, or administrative restrictions on accessing the data source?

None stated

  • Cost? - One time or annual or project based payment? 

“Factual intends to provide discounts to data consumers that contribute improved data back, in order to encourage crowd sourcing and other collaborative approaches to data creation and curation.”

API is free. All download licenses are 12 month paid subscriptions. For zero cost testing please try our Free API option.

Does this dataset appear to meet our needs for the Census study? No

Explanation: This is an additional source of data in regards to points of interest. Unsure if one could filter based on radius form a point. Unknown coverage.