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Placer demonstrates mobile-location analytics to Aberdeen council; privacy and price discussed
Summary
Place (Placer) showed anonymized mobile-location analytics for Aberdeen — estimating about 17,000 residents and 11,000 employees, with a Morrison Park report showing ~57,000 unique visitors in a year; the vendor emphasized privacy and gave a ballpark annual price of about $19,000.
Gaten Lavin of Placer presented a mobile-location analytics tool to Aberdeen City Council on July 8, describing how anonymized app-sourced location data can inform tourism, parks use and retail recruitment.
Lavin said Placer’s panel is drawn from app providers and described a sample of roughly "30,000,000 cell phones," which the company uses with machine learning and census data to infer resident, worker and visitor counts. He told council that Aberdeen’s resident population is about 17,000 and that the city has roughly 11,000 employees, noting that daytime population is higher than the resident base and concluding Aberdeen functions as a commercial hub.
As an example, Lavin showed a Morrison Park property report: "about 57,000 visitors come about 150,000 times" over the last year, with the single biggest day (July 4) bringing approximately 4,000 people to that part of the park. He said those movement patterns can support decisions about where to invest maintenance or programming.
Lavin emphasized privacy controls and exclusions in Placer's policy, saying the product does not provide personal identifiers and will not report on certain sensitive properties (he listed places such as K–12 schools, places of worship and health clinics). When asked about cost, Lavin provided a ballpark annual figure of about $19,000 for a one-year contract and said the typical city deployment provides unlimited reports and users for departments (he also said Placer does not work with law enforcement or fire departments in the presented structure).
Council members asked operational questions about how the company infers visits and the sample-size thresholds for events. Lavin said Placer validates its counts against ticketed venues and that the data updates daily with a three-day lag. Council did not make a procurement decision at the meeting; staff will consider the presentation next steps as part of budget and procurement planning.
