# Recommended Event Categories and Local Rank Thresholds

## Beam Comes First

The most accurate way to identify which events impact your business is with [Beam](https://docs.predicthq.com/getting-started/core-concepts/what-is-beam), PredictHQ’s relevancy engine. Beam analyzes your demand data to surface which event categories matter most at each of your locations, so you don’t need to guess.

Without Beam, you’re guessing which events matter. With Beam, your own demand data tells you - so you cut noise, focus on impact, and avoid costly mistakes.

**If you have demand data, always run Beam first.**

## When You Can’t Use Beam

If demand data isn’t available, we’ve done research to provide industry-level defaults. These include:

* Recommended Feature Groups (categories) per industry
* Minimum Local Rank thresholds to filter out events too small to matter
* Create a [Saved Location](https://app.gitbook.com/s/kEFs8urDbSJqBmXUI3Lv/saved-locations) for each of your business locations — this automatically generates a Predicted Impact Area that defines the geographic scope for event retrieval, so you don't need to manage the boundary manually

These are starting points only. Switch to Beam as soon as you can provide demand data.

## Recommended Feature Groups / Categories

<table><thead><tr><th width="236.2265625">Industry</th><th>Recommended Feature Groups / Categories</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Accommodation</td><td>academic, community, concerts, conferences, expos, festivals, observances, performing-arts, public-holidays, school-holidays, severe-weather, sports</td></tr><tr><td>Parking</td><td>concerts, expos, festivals, observances, performing-arts, public-holidays, school-holidays, sports</td></tr><tr><td>Restaurants</td><td>community, concerts, conferences, expos, festivals, performing-arts, public-holidays, school-holidays, sports</td></tr><tr><td>Retail, CPG</td><td>academic, community, concerts, conferences, expos, festivals, observances, performing-arts, public-holidays, school-holidays, severe-weather, sports</td></tr><tr><td>Transportation</td><td>academic, community, concerts, conferences, expos, festivals, observances, performing-arts, public-holidays, school-holidays, severe-weather, sports</td></tr><tr><td>Tourism, Marketing, and Others</td><td>concerts, expos, festivals, performing-arts, public-holidays, school-holidays, sports</td></tr></tbody></table>

{% hint style="info" %}
When requesting features from Features API with a Beam ID we automatically configure all the correct settings based on the Beam results. When not using Beam, we recommend using the `sum` stat for all relevant features (based on the industry to category mappings above) except for severe weather where we recommend using the `max` stat to avoid over representing the impact of severe weather events when multiple are overlapping.
{% endhint %}

## Minimum Local Rank Thresholds

Local Rank is a location-sensitive scale (0-100, logarithmic) that predicts how much impact an event will have in its immediate vicinity - factoring in population density and local characteristics such as how built-up or accessible an area is. For example, a 1,000-person conference may register a Local Rank of 43 in densely populated Hong Kong and 65 in less crowded Dublin - despite having the same PHQ Rank.

**Beam automatically applies Local Rank filtering** when identifying impactful event types for your demand modeling. However, if you’re setting up filters or queries manually, these thresholds offer a smart default to focus your analysis where it matters until you can rely solely on Beam.

<table><thead><tr><th width="242.7578125">Industry</th><th>Minimum Local Rank</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Accommodation</td><td>50</td></tr><tr><td>Parking</td><td>50</td></tr><tr><td>Restaurants</td><td>50</td></tr><tr><td>Retail</td><td>35</td></tr><tr><td>Others</td><td>35</td></tr></tbody></table>


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