CARTO is a cloud-native Location Intelligence platform designed to enhance and streamline spatial analytics, visualization, and application development. Here’s a comprehensive overview of what CARTO does and its key features:
What CARTO Does
CARTO enables organizations to leverage spatial data and analysis to optimize various business processes. It is particularly useful for tasks such as optimizing delivery routes, enhancing behavioral marketing, strategic store placements, and predicting future outcomes through Spatial Data Science.
Key Features and Functionality
Cloud-Native Integration
CARTO runs natively on top of leading cloud data warehouse platforms like Google BigQuery, Snowflake, AWS Redshift, and others. This integration eliminates the need for data migration or complex ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes, allowing users to access and analyze their spatial data directly within their cloud data warehouse.
Scalable Spatial Analysis
The platform supports the analysis and visualization of large volumes of data, including millions and billions of records, by leveraging the computational power of the cloud data warehouse. It also employs spatial indexing techniques such as H3 to optimize performance with large datasets.
Analytics Toolbox
CARTO offers a suite of over 100 advanced spatial functions, grouped into modules like tiler, data, clustering, and statistics. These functions are installed and run natively in the user’s data warehouse, expanding its geospatial capabilities.
Visualizations and Mapping
Users can build performant, interactive map visualizations without any limits on data volumes. CARTO uses dynamic and static tiling strategies to ensure smooth and scalable visualizations.
CARTO Builder and Workflows
The CARTO Builder is a user-friendly interface for spatial analysis, allowing users to create and share dashboards in minutes. CARTO Workflows is a visual model builder that enables users to build complex spatial analyses and data preparation workflows without writing code. Workflows can be scheduled to run at specific intervals, enhancing automation and data management.
Data Observatory
CARTO provides access to thousands of vetted public and premium spatial datasets through its Data Observatory. These datasets can be used for data enrichment or as additional layers for spatial apps and analyses.
GenAI and Machine Learning Capabilities
The platform includes built-in capabilities for cloud-native Large Language Models (LLMs) and Machine Learning models, enhancing productivity and speeding up the process of gaining insights.
Security and Governance
CARTO inherits data and user access controls from the cloud data warehouse, ensuring streamlined security and governance. This approach maintains the integrity and security of the data while simplifying user management.
Developer Tools
For developers, CARTO offers a complete library of APIs, frameworks, connectors, and development tools to accelerate spatial app development. The platform is compatible with various frameworks such as Angular, React, and Vue, and supports the integration of custom HTML components and charting libraries.
In summary, CARTO is a powerful tool for organizations looking to leverage spatial data for improved decision-making, optimized processes, and enhanced analytics, all within a scalable, cloud-native environment.
