Ordinary geographic maps are static: there are dots and lines, rivers, borders and roads, but no people, no cars, no bicycles, nor their movement.  Thanks to technology being created at Positium LBS this is about to change.

Estonian undertaking Positium uses data from different positioning systems, puts them on the map and analyses it. Thus creating maps that describe how and where people walk and travel, where people live and where they work, how they get to work.

Where people live, how they go to work?

According to Margus Tiru, the CEO of Positium LBS, they can answer questions like “how many Latvians visited the Madonna concert in Tallinn”, “how many of them drove back home at night and how many stayed in Tallinn” or “where do most of the people living in Lasnamäe (a suburb of Tallinn) work, how and at what time they usually go to work”.

This information is very useful for local authorities, state, tourism sector and many others.

Positium can tell you, for example, how tourists move in your country, so you know where to put up signs for them or establish a cafe. You can also analyse how effective was your “Visit our city” marketing campaign.

More useful than statistics

According to Tiru they focus on three areas: tourism, road and city planning. Their customers include numerous local authorities, wanting to foster tourism or decide on where to build roads, houses or businesses. The analysis of how people move provided by Positium LBS is precise and much more useful than the numbers provided by the bureau of statistics.

The primary source of data for the analysis provided by Positium has been the anonymous databases of the mobile operators. However, the data from one mobile operator is not enough for precise analysis, says Tiru.

The complex calibration

The data needs to be “calibrated”, meaning that Positium uses other data sources and puts the non-mobile users and customers of other operators also on the map. These other data sources include many different registers and for example also data from road traffic detectors. The calibration process is complex, consists of many algorithms and software to be developed.

This is where the Enterprise Estonia support steps in. The goal of Positium is to automate whole process with support from Enterprise Estonia. So that in three years time it would be possible to make detailed queries and get calibrated answers in a moment. Even on Positium’s website.

Pilots in Finland and Austria

There is strong export potential in Positium’s offerings. According to Tiru their technology is one of the best in Europe, they have done pilot projects in Finland and Austria. They do close co-operation with the Tartu University and through the academic contacts also with other European universities. Tiru sees Estonia as a nice place to test the technology, but clearly the Estonian market alone is too small for such a useful technology. So the company has serious plans in selling its services to other EU countries.

Don’t do where everyone is doing

Academic circles and co-operation with universities gives a good foundation for exports.

Couple of years ago, when location based services boom started, many companies launched their “active-positioning” tools. Such as vehicle or workers positioning.

Since competition went tougher and tougher, Positium decided they would go to another direction. There’s still today very little competition in passive positioning market. You shouldn’t do what everybody else is doing.

Some examples of Positium data

Germans in Estonia

Transit through Tartu