Dewey was built to bring valuable new data to the academic research community. SafeGraph’s vision is to democratize access to data. With the shared vision to make data more accessible to all, it makes sense that these two companies are partnering to unlock SafeGraph’s data for the academic market.
Who is SafeGraph?
SafeGraph is a leading Places data company. SafeGraph curates the most accurate and precise database of global points of interest each month to power applications, platforms, and services with a location component. As a source of truth for the physical world, SafeGraph data provides an up-to-date record of where places are located and detailed attribution about each of those places, such as when it opened or closed, what type of place it is, what other places it is affiliated with, and how people interact with that location. SafeGraph delivers high-quality data in a unified schema to reduce time spent cleaning and munging data, and serves as a partner in data curation and sourcing for organizations building location-based products and services.
Read SafeGraph’s announcement about joining Dewey.
What type of data does SafeGraph have?
SafeGraph provides open, detailed, and transparent documentation about their data products on their website. The following datasets are now available through the Dewey platform:
- Places - Base information on points of interest (POI) such as name, category, location, and open/close hours.
- Geometry - Precise polygons for building and POI footprints, including spatial hierarchy metadata to reflect how places are related to each other geographically.
- Spend - Aggregated and anonymized consumer spending behavior tied to specific POIs, including what other places consumers shop at and what payment method they use.
- Patterns - Aggregated foot traffic volume patterns to a POI based on anonymized cell phone data.
How can I access SafeGraph data for academic research?
SafeGraph is available to academic researchers exclusively through the Dewey platform. SafeGraph’s data is freely available to anyone from a University subscribing to the Platform Subscription of Dewey.
If your university is not subscribed to Dewey, you can browse and purchase SafeGraph’s datasets on an ad hoc basis. We offer a number of free samples on Dewey so you can get your hands on the data before making a purchase decision. If you want to work with Dewey to get your university subscribed, you can get in touch here.
Academic research using SafeGraph
SafeGraph has a long history of providing data to academic researchers and we’re honored to continue that history. SafeGraph’s academic program started during the COVID-19 pandemic, when their data was critical to understanding behavioral and consumer changes from outbreaks, stay-at-home orders, and policy changes.
Our published research page keeps a rolling list of the latest research papers using SafeGraph data.
SafeGraph is the first of many data providers to join the Dewey platform. If you’re interested in learning about upcoming data partner launches, you can subscribe to our updates.
Questions About SafeGraph
The Dewey community is the place to go to get your questions answered about SafeGraph or any other datasets on the Dewey platform. You can view and search for discussions regarding SafeGraph by using the “safegraphdata” tag.