huff: A Python package for Market Area Analysis
Abstract
Market area models, such as the Huff model and its extensions, are widely used to estimate regional market shares and customer flows of retail and service locations. Another, now very common, area of application is the analysis of catchment areas, supply structures and the accessibility of healthcare locations. The huff Python package provides a complete workflow for market area analysis, including data import, construction of origin-destination interaction matrices, basic model analysis, parameter estimation from empirical data, calculation of distance or travel time indicators, and map visualization. Additionally, the package provides several methods of spatial accessibility analysis. The package is modular and object-oriented. It is intended for researchers in economic geography, regional economics, spatial planning, marketing, geoinformation science, and health geography. The software is openly available via the Python Package Index (PyPI) (https://pypi.org/project/huff/); its development and version history are managed in a public GitHub Repository (https://github.com/geowieland/huff_official) and archived at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18639559).
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.17640,
title = {huff: A Python package for Market Area Analysis},
author = {Thomas Wieland},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.17640},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
v1.2.0; added mathematical appendix, added references, update of usage statistics