Regional Domicile Analytics concepts

Explore the concepts of regional domicile analytics, including vehicle domicile definitions, analysis periods, domicile duty cycles, and eligibility criteria for analysis.

Domicile

A vehicle’s domicile refers to the area, either a generalized geography or more localized bounded location, that a vehicle is said to originate from and/or belong to.

A vehicle’s domicile can be defined based on any of the following, measured across a set time-frame:

  • The location the vehicle makes the most stops

  • The location the vehicle is stopped the longest (as in the location of longest dwell time)

  • The location the vehicle spends the most time traveling

In the context of Altitude, we define a vehicle’s domicile as the generalized geography where the vehicle dwells the longest over the analysis period. The domicile geography is determined by aggregating dwell times of all vehicle stops in a cluster to determine the cluster with the greatest dwell time.

Calculated analysis period

In Altitude, the domicile is typically determined over the full analysis period, with a set minimum of one month, and the maximum analysis period of one year.

Should the input analysis date range fall below one month, the period for determining the domicile is adjusted to be one month prior to the input end date.

Domicile duty cycle

The movement of a vehicle from when it leaves its domicile until it returns to its domicile is called the domicile duty cycle. Based on the operational pattern of a vehicle, it may have a single domicile duty cycle every few days to multiple domicile duty cycles each day.

A domicile duty cycle is typically characterized as a series of consecutive trips, which when chained together form the full domicile duty cycle: a trip that starts in the domicile and travels away from the domicile, zero, one or more trips that stops at non domicile locations, and a final trip that travels to and stops in the domicile. A domicile duty cycle only has a single domicile stop relating to the final trip in the series of trips that make up the domicile duty cycle.

In the Altitude regional domicile analytics API, we allow the user two inputs to control how domicile duty cycles are created and/or filter out domicile duty cycles of lesser significance:

minDomicileStopDuration
The minimum amount of time a vehicle must stop at its domicile for that stop to be considered the end of the domicile duty cycle. Adjusting the minimum domicile stop duration will result in a continued chaining of trips from a domicile to the first stop at the domicile where the stop duration exceeds this minimum.
minDomicileDutyCycleDistance
The minimum distance that a domicile duty cycle should cover in order for it to be considered of significance for analysis. Domicile duty cycles that have a distance coverage less than this value are excluded from eligibility and analysis calculations i.e. they are treated as insignificant and dropped.

Eligibility

In regional domicile analytics, metrics are processed across all vehicles that meet eligibility criteria i.e. eligible vehicles. Entering eligibility criteria is optional. If you do not provide eligibility criteria, we will process all vehicles that have valid domiciles in the input region.
Note:

A vehicle needs to have at least two domicile duty cycles in the analysis period to be considered, regardless of eligibility inputs.

A vehicle is considered eligible when its domicile duty cycle distances meet the user input eligibility criteria during the analysis period, and who has at least the minimum number of stops at the domicile.

The following percentile, distance, and stop input parameters allow users to define when a vehicle is considered to be eligible:

eligiblePercentileThreshold
The percentile (interpolated) of a vehicle's domicile duty cycle distances that should be compared to the input eligibleMaxDistanceThreshold.
eligibleMaxDistanceThreshold
The maximum allowable distance of the input eligiblePercentileThreshold percentile of a vehicle's domicile duty cycle distances. A vehicle whose calculated value exceeds this maximum is deemed not eligible.
eligibleMinDomicileStops
The minimum number of domicile stops that a vehicle needs to make in the analysis period to be deemed eligible. Each domicile duty cycle has a single domicile stop hence this is the same as the number of domicile duty cycles. Note that Geotab mandates at least a minimum of 2 domicile stops for a vehicle.

For example, if the eligibleMaxDistanceThreshold is set to 300 miles, the eligiblePercentileThreshold to 0.85 (85%) and an eligibleMinDomicileStops value of 2, the user is indicating that of all the domicile duty cycles for the vehicle, 85% (interpolated) of those domicile duty cycles should have a distance less than 300 miles, and the vehicle needs to have stopped at the domicile at least 2 times, for that vehicle to be considered eligible. And if eligible, the vehicle’s domicile duty cycles are included in the Regional Domicile Analytics analysis outputs. Note, that domicile duty cycle distances are interpolated to reasonably estimate the requested percentile in instances where the vehicle has less than 100 domicile duty cycles.