John Wyld, a senior lecturer at Staffordshire University’s Business School, has collected a comprehensive database (from multiple sources) of independent breweries which have operated in the UK over the last 25 years.
This includes the year in which a brewery opened (and closed), the number of pubs connected to the brewery for each year of operation, the type of location (industrial unit, brew pub, etc.), and address information (postcode).
John had a number of hypotheses based on the relative success and failure of a brewery compared to characteristics of its location. He has begun collaboration with Graham Smith (a Geographical Information Topic Group member) to explore how GIS technology can be used to explore these theories.
The breweries database has been geo-referenced using the National Statistics Postcode Directory. The density of breweries is being measured using point in polygon analysis and area calculations for counties and local authorities. These figures can be used to produce maps of densities to show the national distribution of breweries.
This analysis can be refined by looking at the relative success of the areas in terms of the total number of operating years for all breweries. These figures are then being compared to population density figures to test whether this influences success.
This work is also looking at urban and rural patterns and deprivation data from the Index of Multiple Deprivation. The maps are also being produced for each individual year of data to show change over time.
The survival rate of a brewery is being measured against its distance to the nearest motorway (or other major road route). This analysis will utilise network analysis tools to calculated distances from each brewery along the road network.
Individual brewery locations are being analysed to pick out ‘clusters’ of breweries. These clusters are identified and analysed using a number of the Spatial Statistics tools within ESRI ArcGIS. Clusters are classified in terms of the distance from the ‘centre’ to the nearest motorway, the population density around the cluster and the relative success of the breweries within the clusters.
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Screenshot: Brewery density weighted by total 'life years'
This study acts as an example of how simple GIS tools can be used to map commercial or industrial locations and show spatial patterns (including time series). It also shows how advanced spatial analysis such as network distances and spatial statistics can be used to add value to a database in terms of characterising industrial locations.