The Potential Role and Application of Emerging Data in a Border-Crossing Context

In recognition of the potential of crowdsourced data with detailed spatiotemporal information, this study aimed to perform a deep-dive analysis exploring northbound cross-border trips using location-based data sources. The research was built on a previous project by the research team (Vargas et al., 2021) that analyzed three months of cross-border INRIX data (INRIX, n.d.) for the time period between January 20 and March 19, 2020. In this follow-up project, researchers expanded the study by first examining different periods of INRIX data (October-November 2019), which allowed the researchers to demonstrate a typical traffic flow between the El Paso - Ciudad Juarez border cities. In other words, the research team explored four months of pre-pandemic data (from two different periods: October -November 2019 and January 20 - March 19, 2020) and one month of data (March 20 - April 19, 2020) that captured the initial period of border restrictions. The results of this additional analysis of INRIX data are available in Vargas et al. (2022). While aimed to be complementary to the prior research of the authors, the primary objective of this current study was to explore the potential role and application of location-based services (LBS) data. This report is thus devoted to the discussion and analysis of the LBS data in a border-crossing context as another potential data source through a specific case using SafeGraph data. LBS data are cost-effective and considered an alternative way of collecting data, especially to understand visitation patterns. SafeGraph is a data company that provides point-of-interest (POI) data based on business listing and location information collected in partnership with third-party data providers such as mobile application developers (SafeGraph, n.d.). The study utilized the data corresponding to the period of January 2018 to December 2021 (four years) and focused on selected cities in Texas. The remainder of this report includes four chapters: 1. Chapter 2 positions the study by reviewing the related works on cross-border mobility and the use of POI data. 2. Chapter 3 describes the methodological details of the research study, including data attributes and limitations, data collection, and processing. 3. Chapter 4 provides the results of the analysis conducted, including findings related to cross-border trips at the selected locations. 4. Chapter 5 concludes the report with a summary and final remarks, highlighting the contributions and limitations and suggesting several possible research directions.