SAT Text Structure and Purpose Question

Researchers César A. Hidalgo, Elisa Castañer, and Andres Sevtsuk created a computer model to predict the mix of gyms, clothing stores, and other businesses found in a given neighborhood. How we define a neighborhood and its boundaries is subjective, so the team used a clustering algorithm to locate dense groupings of amenities that represent human-identified neighborhoods like Boston's Union Square. The predictive model, which incorporates this algorithm, is sure to be invaluable in determining the optimal mix of a city's amenities. Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?