POI Platform & Event Distribution Hub
2025
Centralized Points-of-Interest system with multi-precision geohash + Redis geospatial cache. The EDH counter-proposal routes change events through Apigee for PDPL filtering, consent validation, attribute redaction, and commercial-terms enforcement.
The problem
The Balady platform is the authoritative source of Points-of-Interest data (merchants, government facilities, citizen-facing landmarks) for Saudi municipalities. Multiple consumers — internal (ArcGIS, Commercial Domain) and external commercial vendors — need timely POI updates. The challenge: citizen-facing locations are personal data under PDPL, and commercial distribution requires consent + commercial-terms enforcement.
The architecture
POI Platform — the canonical store:
- ESRI Geodatabase as the authoritative store
- Multi-precision geohash + Redis geospatial cache for fast radius queries (different precision levels for different use-cases: street radius vs city radius)
- Dedicated approval workflow for changes (gated, audited)
Event Distribution Hub (EDH) — my counter-proposal for distribution:
Instead of point-to-point integrations, all POI-change events flow through Apigee before reaching any consumer. Apigee applies:
- PDPL filtering — drop or redact fields the consumer is not entitled to
- Consent validation — check the citizen’s outgoing consent flags per consumer
- Attribute redaction — partial fields based on the consumer’s contract
- Commercial-terms enforcement — rate-limit, payment-tier, contract scope
Only after passing all four gates does the event reach the consumer’s webhook or Kafka topic.
Outcome
A defensible commercial-distribution architecture where compliance is enforced at the gateway rather than depending on every consumer to honour the contract.