GIS in Business - Routing analysis of Plaza Shoppers 3. Data Modeling in GIS Figure 1 gives an example of how the various plaza stores and facilities are modeled into nodes and paths for networking. Basically all facilities and entrance/exit/escalators are modeled as nodes, the stores as polygons and their entrance(s) as nodes. A path is defined as a connected segment between each of these nodes. These paths must be feasible walkways within the plazas. Nodes and paths form a planar graph network for each level of the two plazas. To link consecutive levels, an imaginary path is modeled in between the two nodes representing the escalator/lift points of the upper and lower levels. This path might be unidirectional or bi-directional. A number of attribute tables are created in association with these spatial entities. The store attribute table will store the store name, type of product, area and so on. More importantly, the path attribute table will store information on shoppers’ walking behavior, e.g. the shopper-id, the frequency the shoppers pass by, the observed behavior of the shopper in terms of a) non-stop window shopping, b) stop window shopping, c) walking into the store and d) passing by without any window shopping. By identifying and modeling a number of key plaza features related to fashion shopping, a number of interesting shoppers walking pattern may be drawn and analyzed with the numerous attributes in the database. Some of these patterns are presented in the following section. 4. Pattern Analysis With reference to Figure 2, the following patterns might be concluded from Grand Century Place:  Figure 2 Rate of shoppers flow for the different levels of Grand Century Place
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