Your catchment is probably wrong

Most site decisions in healthcare, leisure and retail still start with a circle on a map. It is quick and it feels objective. It is also wrong in almost every real location, because people do not travel as the crow flies.

A drivetime catchment follows the road network. Put a river, a ring road or a one-way system in the way and two sites a mile apart can end up serving populations with different ages, incomes, health needs and competitors. The circle hides that; the drivetime shows it.

The second problem is what gets measured inside the boundary. Population counts are easy. What matters is how the population deviates from comparable places: more long-term conditions, more car dependency, fewer competitors per head. Ranked deviation tells you why a site might work. A raw count only tells you it is busy.

This is what DataLense was built to do. Whatever tool you use, ask one question before committing capital: would the answer change if the catchment followed the roads? Surprisingly often, it does.