Cluster deduplication threshold
The co-location index pipeline produces one cluster per anchor store — every qualifying hypermarket, hardware retailer, and warehouse club generates a candidate cluster centred on that store's coordinates, per the cluster formation rules. When two anchors occupy the same commercial zone, the result is two overlapping clusters representing the same trade area. The deduplication step resolves that redundancy. Trade-area inputs to the ranking system are aggregated after deduplication runs.
The same-parking-lot problem
Large commercial zones frequently host two or more anchor-category stores within metres of each other — a home-improvement superstore and a warehouse club sharing a single parking lot is the common case. Without deduplication, both stores produce clusters with nearly identical catchment geometry, co-tenants, and scores. The map displays two concentric rings covering the same zone — neither wrong in isolation, but together misleading about the number of distinct commercial nodes in that corridor.
Threshold selection
The deduplication step removes any cluster whose anchor store falls within a fixed, tightly-set radius of a higher-ranked cluster anchor already confirmed for retention. The radius is narrow enough that only stores genuinely sharing a single parking lot or immediate building complex are collapsed. Anchors in adjacent strip malls separated by a service road are treated as distinct nodes and retained.
The calibration is deliberately conservative in that direction. A threshold set too wide collapses separately operated commercial blocks — blocks that serve different residential catchments — into a single node, understating the number of distinct sites in a corridor. Suppressing a legitimate node is the more damaging error of the two, because it removes a site from consideration without surfacing that anything was removed.
Ranking the survivor
When two anchors fall within the threshold distance, the retained cluster is the one with the higher count of co-tenants inside its catchment. Where that count ties, the tiebreak falls to the co-tenant count inside a tighter inner radius. This ensures that the cluster representing the fuller commercial zone — more stores, broader multi-purpose draw — survives, regardless of which anchor happened to be processed first.
Pipeline effect
Deduplication removes a meaningful share of candidate clusters as same-zone duplicates in a representative pipeline run. The reduction is concentrated in dense commercial corridors where multiple anchor formats co-locate in close proximity. Tier distribution and national rankings are assigned after deduplication runs, so the published counts reflect deduplicated zones only. Current production counts are published in Regional Markets Intelligence System.