CAST Maps Digital Info for Business Solutions

If Fred Limp had been on board the Nina in 1492, chances are Christopher Columbus would have come up with a more appropriate name for the West Indies.

First of all, Limp could have told Columbus that he was nowhere near India when he collided with the island of San Salvador on the opposite side of the globe. But that’s only the beginning. Limp could have given Columbus a wide range of specs about the Caribbean island, from demographics to where he could get a good hamburger.

Well, that is, if 2004 digital mapping technology and fast-food restaurants had been around 512 years ago, he could have.

“I can tell you where every fast-food place is in the country that sells hamburgers,” said Limp, who is director of the University of Arkansas’ Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies.

That’s just an example, of course. The work being done at CAST is much more serious than that, ranging from bioterrorism prevention to remapping Arkansas’ legislative districts.

CAST also has applications in business, from helping retailers decide where to build stores to assisting trucking companies that want to find the best cross-country routes to keep fuel and tariff costs at a minimum.

GIS on Steroids

CAST uses geographic information systems with other data and technologies to come up with digital maps for clients that range from other UA departments to businesses like Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems.

Limp refers to CAST as a “force multiplier.”

“CAST is a campuswide research unit,” Limp said. “Our fundamental responsibility is to engage in basic research in geospatial technology and to serve as a force multiplier … We’re like BASF in a lot of this. We don’t make the skis. We make the skis better.”

CAST is funded almost exclusively from external grants, which total $1.5 million to $2 million per year, Limp said.

The center has a business incubator role as well.

Besides Oracle, which provided CAST with $4.5 million worth of software and technical support, and Sun Microsystems, other CAST partners include the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Integraph Corp., MapInfo Corp., PCI Geomatics, Skyline Software, Trimble Navigation Ltd. and Definiens Imaging GmbH of Germany.

Limp said CAST’s GeoStor (www.cast.uark.edu/cast/geostor) is a multi-terabyte database that provides a wealth of geospatial information about the state of Arkansas. The Web site refers to it as “the online Arkansas spatial data infrastructure.” GeoStor information is free to the public.

GeoStor’s digital data warehouse provides a “seamless data representation,” according to CAST literature. GeoStor contains hundreds of maps of a wide variety of things in Arkansas including population trends, land use, legislative districts, traffic counts, airports, boat ramps, camping sites, chicken houses, churches, elevation, factories, fish hatcheries, flood zones, grain elevators, gravel pits, highway overpasses, hospitals, lakes, landmarks, oil fields, picnic grounds, precipitation, roads, soils, streams, swamps and trails.

“There is no other state in the United States that has that kind of information in that form,” Limp said.

CAST has 22 full-time employees and 14 student workers.

Agribusiness

CAST did a comprehensive crop inventory for the entire state in 1999 and is currently working on another one. Researchers map the crops via computer, then travel the state to check for accuracy. Limp said the 1999 survey was more than 90 percent accurate.

Limp said the study was valuable to agribusiness because, for example, people can decide where to build a mill to process grain.

Digital mapping has made agricultural yields more predictable, Limp said.

“You’re playing against the house because you’re guessing what the wheat yield is going to be in Uzbekistan,” he said. “Large corporations know what the wheat yield is going to be in Uzbekistan [because of digital mapping].”

A similar agricultural mapping project CAST conducted in 1992 for the Delta region of Arkansas revealed a “dramatic increase in aquaculture” such as fish farming, Limp said.

Digital mapping also can be used in epidemiology to track the spread of disease. In one study, CAST looked at how the avian influenza virus could be spread from chicken house to chicken house in Mexico through a variety of means including contaminated debris sticking to the bottom of poultry workers shoes.

Retail

By using digital mapping, retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville can get very detailed demographics for a particular neighborhood within a city.

Much of the demographic information is available for free from the U.S. Census Bureau, but digital mapping can mesh those stats with geographic information such as distances to potential stores and drive times for shoppers.

Economic and geographic information combined could tell Wal-Mart, for instance, that swimming pool supplies are more likely to sell briskly in stores near affluent areas. The world’s largest retailer tailors its store inventory to a degree from city to city and sometimes from neighborhood to neighborhood. For an even more in-depth analysis, digital mapping can include factors like weather trends.

“A lot of different companies and folks who are looking for site selection, regardless of whether it’s going to be a taco stand or whatever, are starting to use these tools,” said Brian Culpepper, a GIS specialist at CAST. “We’ve noticed that the software vendors are turning to meet the demands of the business sector.”

Companies like DigitalGlobe of Longmont, Colo. — which provided satellite images to the U.S. government of bombing in Iraq — are now selling images to companies in the private sector for business applications.

Culpepper, who teaches a business geographics course in the UA’s Walton College of Business, said the camera aboard DigitalGlobe’s QuickBird satellite can zoom in on streets and neighborhoods, making the photos valuable for site selection and real estate development.

“Since January 2002, QuickBird has collected and stored in its image library more than 200,000 scenes of imagery covering more than 78 million square kilometers of the Earth and collects an additional 1 million square kilometers each week,” according to the company’s Web site, www.digitalglobe.com.

Both Limp and Culpepper said companies are reluctant to talk about their digital mapping capabilities because they’re afraid other companies will adopt the same technology.

A magazine called Business Geographics had a short life for that very reason, Limp said.

Planalytics Crunches Weather Data for Retailers

Chaos is good for retail, at least when the weather is concerned. It sends people to stores to buy coats or umbrellas. But it’s the long-term weather data that is most important to retailers.

Many retailers — including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville and J.C. Penney of Plano, Texas — use Planalytics Inc. of Wayne, Penn., for those long-range forecasts.

Scott Bernhardt, senior vice president of operations at Planalytics, said the company can monitor weather trends on a weekly basis 11 months in advance. Retailers use the service to help predict weekly sales for stores open at least a year.

“The big clunky stuff is not the chaos,” Bernhardt said of long-range weekly comparisons. “It’s very much a pattern … What is possible is to understand overall trends and look for indicators. My charter is to make money for my customers. I’m looking for the overall drivers, and the difference is in the population.”

A winter snow in Buffalo, N.Y., is nothing, Bernhardt said.

“But a half-inch snow in Atlanta can shut the city down,” he said. “The biggest day-in and day-out drivers are temperatures.”

96 Markets

Using technology developed by the U.S. Department of Defense, Planalytics takes all those population and weather factors into consideration to help predict consumer behavior.

For its retail and manufacturing clients, Planalytics splits the 48 contiguous states up into 96 markets. Within those markets, the company will predict “weather driven demand” for a retailer’s individual stores. The WDD often correlates to same-store sales increases or decreases. It’s also a good barometer for store managers to use. Lawn mowers, for example, can be pushed to the front of the store just before the first warm weekend of spring.

“Old-time retailers used to chase the weather,” Bernhardt said. “You can’t chase it because it changes too much.”

If a retailer is reacting to short-term National Weather Service forecasts, like those on local television stations, by the time new merchandise is ordered and received, the weather may have changed considerably and the retailer is stuck with inventory that will have to be discounted later on. That’s how Planalytics differs from the National Weather Service, which is primarily concerned about personal safety in the event of severe weather.

“Weather’s very blobby,” Bernhardt said. “It doesn’t matter every day, but when it does matter, it matters a lot.”

Merrill Lynch Global Securities in New York City frequently cites Planalytics in its retail projections. For Merrill Lynch and many other clients who just want the bottom line, Planalytics boils all 96 markets down into one number reflecting weather-driven demand for the entire nation.

“But it’s the number to beat,” Bernhardt said.

The Good Cold Snap

A cold January, for example, is good for retail apparel sales. A cold late February or early March is bad for retail because winter clothes have already been purchased and consumers are holed up waiting for the spring thaw.

Warm weather in March prompts consumers to hit the stores for everything from short-sleeved shirts to gardening supplies.

Last September, retailers had good same-store sales increases because they were being compared to a weak increase in September 2002, Bernhardt said. But then a warm blast hit the nation in October, and “nobody was buying apparel.”

The “most weather affected” area of the United States is the Southwest, and in particular Southern California, Bernhardt said.

“If there’s a cloudy rain in November in Southern California, that’s winter,” Bernhardt said. “They run out and buy fleece … It takes a very small degree of change to drive consumer behavior.”

Northwest Arkansas is one of the most volatile areas of the country when it comes to weather, Bernhardt said.

“That’s very good for retail.”

In addition to its retail and manufacturing division, Planalytics also has divisions that specialize in the life sciences and energy industries.

The company began in 1990 when it purchased the technology from the U.S. Department of Defense. Initially known as Strategic Weather Services, the name was changed to Planalytics in 1999.