january 30, 2026
Movement Data helps planners and decision-makers understand how people move through parks, open spaces and active environments. It offers an objective, evidence-based, and affordable solution to the challenge of measurement of activity in informal spaces of all types. By examining patterns of movement activity across different locations, times of day and seasons, Movement Data provides insights into where activity concentrates, how it changes over time, and who is using locations.
This insight is used to support decisions around planning, grant-funding, access, maintenance, safety, charging and investment across a wide range of environments.
Why Movement Data matters
Understanding movement is critical for managing and planning effectively, helping to focus resources. Without reliable insights into how people actually use spaces and places, decisions are often based solely on assumptions, anecdotal evidence or manual observations.
Movement Data provides a consistent, scalable way to understand:
- How many visitors
- When they visit
- Their patterns of activity within locations
- How long they stay
- Which communities visitors come from
- The demographics, interest and wider behaviour of these visitors
This allows planners to move beyond manual visitation counts toward a deeper understanding of behaviour, demand, and it supports an objective assessment of the impact of open spaces on communities.
Beyond visit counts
Movement data reporting alone offers a useful solution to measuring the use of places and spaces of all kinds, but when used in combination with additional data sources we are able to unlock a deeper level of insight which moves beyond counting.
As experts in combining disparate data sources on behalf of the sector, we are able to use these skills to help identify sections of the community who may be underrepresented or excluded from spaces and places, as well as evidencing the socio-economic, and public health benefits of green and open spaces. For those with commercial responsibilities, we can offer tangible commercial insights which can be used to support commercial efforts to achieve viability and sustainability.
Why ActiveXchange Movement Data is different
Broad, validated data
ActiveXchange is data agnostic, which means that we continually source and bring together the most relevant, accurate (validated) and cost effective source data for the industry. We undertake a process of continuous configuration and validation, transforming raw device data into accurate and consistent visit counts. This requires continuous gathering of ground truths from a sector network, and the development of dynamic model coefficients, relevant to different contexts, areas and populations. This ultimately gives planners and decision-makers confidence they are using the most reliable outputs.
Cost effectiveness
By bringing data and technology together on behalf of an industry network (that spans 6 countries) and operates alongside a wide range of industry associations, ActiveXchange passes on economies of scale to reduce cost barriers and increase accessibility for the industry. This makes Movement Data accessible to all sectors, especially those who may not have the budget and resources to manage a large number of complex datasets.
Application
ActiveXchange works with each partner to ensure Movement Data doesn’t sit in isolation. We combine it with participation, infrastructure, community population and commercial datasets to create actionable and valuable reach, impact and commercial insights. Our client success team that has deep sector knowledge, helps each client align the outputs with real world scenarios, challenges and opportunities.
Turn movement insights into better decisions
Explore how ActiveXchange Movement Data supports planning, access, safety, funding and investment decisions across parks, open spaces and active environments.
