Show me the code: spatial analysis and open source

This paper considers the intersection of academic spatial analysis with the open source revolution. Its basic premise is that the potential for cross-fertilization between the two is rich, yet some misperceptions about these two communities pose challenges to realizing these opportunities. The paper provides a primer on the open source movement for academicians with an eye towards correcting these misperceptions. It identifies a number of ways in which increased adoption of open source practices in spatial analysis can enhance the development of the next generation of tools and the wider practice of scientific research and education.

Channels of synthesis forty years on: integrated analysis of spatial economic systems

Isards vision of integrated modeling that was laid out in the 1960s book Methods of Regional Science provided a road map for the development of more sophisticated analysis of spatial economic systems. Some forty years later, we look back at this vision and trace developments in a sample of three areas – demographic-econometric integrated modeling, spatial interaction modeling, and environmental-economic modeling. Attention will be focused on methodological advances and their motivation by new developments in theory as well as innovations in the applications of these models to address new policy challenges. Underlying the discussion will be an evaluation of the way in which spatial issues have been addressed, ranging from concerns with regionalization to issues of spillovers and spatial correlation.     

GeoSurveillance: a GIS-based system for the detection and monitoring of spatial clusters

This article introduces a software package named GeoSurveillance that combines spatial statistical techniques and GIS routines to perform tests for the detection and monitoring of spatial clustering. GeoSurveillance provides both retrospective and prospective tests. While retrospective tests are applied to spatial data collected for a particular point in time, prospective tests attempt to incorporate the dynamic nature of spatial patterns via analyzing time-series data to detect emergent clusters as quickly as possible. This article will outline the structure of GeoSurveillance as well as describe the statistical cluster detection methods implemented in the software. It concludes with an illustration of the use of the software to analyze the spatial pattern of low birth weights in Los Angeles County, California.      

Interactive analysis of the spatial distribution of disease using a geographic information systems

Geographic information systems (GIS) provide a variety of tools for the manipulation and display of public health data. Few, however, enable users to interactively evaluate hypotheses on spatial trends in disease risk that may be suggested by maps of measures of disease impact. We addressed this limitation by developing a seamless interface between a commercial GIS and a suite of spatial analysis algorithms. Users of the system can utilize the GIS's capability to interactively select and manipulate geographically referenced data and, through a series of pull-down menus, apply a variety of exploratory analysis methods to this information. In the presented application, we illustrate this capability by including algorithms for the reduction of random noise in observed incidence rates, for the detection of unusual aggregations of disease events, and for the statistical evaluation of inferences drawn from spatial trends. We demonstrate this application by examining lung cancer mortality in the state of Ohio. Received: 22 September 1999 / Accepted: 8 March 2000     

Global and local indicators of spatial association between points and polygons: A study of land use change

The existing indicators related to spatial association, especially the K function, can measure only the same dimension of vector data, such as points, lines and polygons, respectively. We develop four new indicators that can analyze and model spatial association for the mixture of different dimensions of vector data, such as lines and points, points and polygons, lines and polygons. The four indicators can measure the spatial association between points and polygons from both global and local perspectives. We also apply the presented methods to investigate the association of temples and villages on land-use change at multiple distance scales in the Guoluo Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province, PR China. Global indicators show that temples are positively associated with land-use change at large spatial distances (e.g., >6000 m), while the association between villages and land-use change is insignificant at all distance scales. Thus temples, as religious and cultural centers, have a stronger association with land-use change than the places where people live. However, local indicators show that these associations vary significantly in different sub-areas of the study region. Furthermore, the association of temples with land-use change is also dependent on the specific type of land-use change. The case study demonstrates that the presented indicators are powerful tools for analyzing the spatial association between points and polygons.     

STAMP: spatial–temporal analysis of moving polygons

Research questions regarding temporal change in spatial patterns are increasingly common in geographical analysis. In this research, we explore and extend an approach to the spatial–temporal analysis of polygons that are spatially distinct and experience discrete changes though time. We present five new movement events for describing spatial processes: displacement, convergence, divergence, fragmentation and concentration. Spatial–temporal measures of events for size and direction are presented for two time periods, and multiple time periods. Size change metrics are based on area overlaps and a modified cone-based model is used for calculating polygon directional relationships. Quantitative directional measures are used to develop application specific metrics, such as an estimation of the concentration parameter for a von Mises distribution, and the directional rate of spread. The utility of the STAMP methods are demonstrated by a case study on the spread of a wildfire in northwestern Montana.      

Open source, spatial analysis, and activity-travel behaviour research: capabilities of the aspace package

This paper reports on recent experience with the development of aspace, an Open Source (OS) library for the geographic visualization and analysis of activity-travel behaviour. The paper begins with an overview of recent progress with respect to the convergence of Open Source technology, spatial analysis, and travel behaviour research. The remainder of the paper focuses on aspace; a collection of functions that, when combined with data describing the geographical location of daily activities, can be used to visualize and describe spatial properties of individual and household activity spaces. These properties include: size, orientation, shape, and the geographical dispersion of activity locations contained within the activity space. Several planar geometries are used to transform measurable spatial properties into intuitive objects for visualizing spatial patterns of activity participation. Experiments are conducted, using data from the first wave of the 2003 Toronto Travel Activity Panel Survey, to demonstrate the potential application of aspace for basic and applied policy-based research into activity-travel behaviour. The toolkit is distributed as a downloadable ‘package’ from the Open Source R Project for Statistical Computing.      

高速公路平面控制测量中投影问题的分析

高速公路平面控制测量需要将控制点纳入国家高斯平面坐标系,由此不可避免地出现距离长度变形,并导致平面控制测量投影面与施工高程面分离。通过分析长度变形产生的原因、国家统一坐标系的局限性以及长度变形对路线测设误差的影响,提出了减小长度变形对高速公路施工精度影响的方法。     

利用算子微分研究投影变形理论

本文利用算子的微分矩阵研究投影变形理论,得到了新的等角、等面积和等距离投影的充要条件,并利用这些条件探求了等角圆锥投影以及等角和等面积圆柱投影的正反解变换。     

Incorporating spatial variation in housing attribute prices: a comparison of geographically weighted regression and the spatial expansion method

Hedonic house price models typically impose a constant price structure on housing characteristics throughout an entire market area. However, there is increasing evidence that the marginal prices of many important attributes vary over space, especially within large markets. In this paper, we compare two approaches to examine spatial heterogeneity in housing attribute prices within the Tucson, Arizona housing market: the spatial expansion method and geographically weighted regression (GWR). Our results provide strong evidence that the marginal price of key housing characteristics varies over space. GWR outperforms the spatial expansion method in terms of explanatory power and predictive accuracy.

一种基于网格的空间聚类方法在区域划分中的应用

区域划分是依据人口和社会经济指标将行政统计单元或其他地理实体划分成若干个不同水平或类别的集合。由于大多数的人口和社会经济指标来源于面状数据-行政统计单元,常用的区域划分的空间聚类方法是基于面状数据的,本文通过分析现有面状数据的聚类算法特点和不足,进而提出一种新的算法,该方法提出将面状统计单元进行网格划分,引入基于网格密度聚类算法的思想,克服现有面状聚类的诸多缺点,打破行政区划的限制,更好地发现潜在信息。     

空间信息可视化挖掘研究

空间信息的可视化挖掘是数据挖掘领域的热点 ,具有很强的应用前景。本文从数据挖掘的基本概念入手 ,详细介绍了可视化数据挖掘的两种分类体系 :Keim分类体系和Card分类体系 ,同时分析了这两种分类体系中各种可视化数据挖掘方法的基本思路 ,探讨了可视化数据挖掘技术与空间信息领域应用相结合的各种途径 ,并给出了空间信息可视化挖掘的常用方法     

常用海图投影平面上大椭圆航线的表象与曲率分析

利用空间矢量方法推导出了椭球面上只与起止点地理坐标有关的大椭圆航线方程,代入4种常用海图投影的正解公式,得到不同投影平面上的大椭圆参数方程;利用上述参数方程进而推导出了不同投影面上大椭圆航线的曲率与曲率半径公式。选取伦敦到纽约的大椭圆航线为例,通过绘制不同投影面上的大椭圆航线并分析其曲率、曲率半径变化曲线可知,大椭圆航线在日晷投影上的表象为曲率处处为0的直线,而在其他投影面上的表象为曲率较小但不断变化的曲线。利用推导的曲率半径公式可以计算各类大椭圆航线上任意位置的“代曲直距”,方便在不同比例尺的海图上对大椭圆航线进行量测和绘制,提高作图效率。     

Evaluating the effect of spatial subsetting on subpixel unmixing methodology applied to ASTER over a hydrothermally altered terrain

This study investigates the effect of spatial subsets of Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection radiometer (ASTER) L1B visible-near infrared and short wave-infrared (VNIR-SWIR) data on matched filtering results at the central part of Kerman magmatic arc, where abundant porphyry copper deposits exist. The matched filtering (MF) procedure was run separately at sites containing hydrothermal minerals such as sericite, kaolinite, chlorite, and jarosite to map the abundances of these minerals on spatial subsets containing 100, 75, 50, and 25 percent of the original scene. Results were evaluated by comparing the matched filtering scores with the mineral abundances obtained by semi-quantitative XRD analysis of corresponding field samples. It was concluded that MF method should be applied to the whole scene prior to any data subsetting.     

A method for the selection of relevant pattern indices for monitoring of spatial forest cover pattern at a regional scale

When signing Agenda 21, several countries agreed to monitor the status of forests to ensure their sustainable use. For reporting on the change in spatial forest cover pattern on a regional scale, pattern metrics are widely used. These indices are not often thoroughly evaluated as to their sensitivity to remote sensing data characteristics. Hence, one would not know whether the change in the metric values was due to actual landscape pattern changes or to characteristic variation of multitemporal remote sensing data.     

基于Oracle Spatial的多元重力场信息数据库的设计与应用

随着地球重力场信息多元化的发展及其应用领域越来越广,科学高效的管理和应用重力场信息数据就显得尤为重要。文中介绍了基于Oracle Spatial技术设计与构建的重力场信息数据库的结构框架,分析了存储数据信息的种类、属性及特点,研究了数据的存储方式。在多元化重力场数据与基础地图数据统一管理的基础上,初步实现了多元化重力场信息的存储、查询、计算、绘图及显示等功能。     

Assessing the spatial distribution of crop areas using a cross-entropy method

While crop production statistics are reported on a geopolitical – often national – basis, we often need to know, for example, the status of production or productivity within specific sub-regions, watersheds, or agro-ecological zones. Such re-aggregations are typically made using expert judgments or simple area-weighting rules. We describe a new, entropy-based approach to the plausible estimates of the spatial distribution of crop areas. Using this approach tabular crop production statistics are blended judiciously with an array of other secondary data to assess the areas of specific crops within individual ‘pixels’—typically 25–100 km² in size. The information utilized includes crop production statistics, farming system characterization, satellite-based interpretation of land cover, biophysical crop suitability assessments, and population density. An application is presented in which Brazilian state level production statistics are used to generate pixel level crop area data for eight crops. To validate the spatial allocation we aggregated the pixel estimates to obtain synthetic estimates of municipality level areas in Brazil, and compared those estimates with actual municipality statistics. The approach produced extremely promising results. We then examined the robustness of these results compared to simplified approaches to spatializing crop production statistics and showed that, while computationally intensive, the cross-entropy method does provide more reliable spatial allocations.     

Impact of the spatial resolution on the energy balance components on an open-canopy olive orchard

The recent technical improvements in the sensors used to acquire images from land surfaces has made possible to assess the performance of the energy balance models using unprecedented spatial resolutions. Thus, the objective of this work is to evaluate the response of the different energy balance components obtained from METRIC model as a function of the input pixel size. Very high spatial resolution airborne images (≈50 cm) on three dates over olive orchards were used to aggregate different spatial resolutions, ranging from 5 m to 1 km. This study represents the first time that METRIC model has been run with such high spatial resolution imagery in heterogeneous agricultural systems, evaluating the effects caused by its aggregation into coarser pixel sizes. Net radiation and soil heat flux showed a near insensitive behavior to spatial resolution changes, reflecting that the emissivity and albedo respond linearly to pixel aggregation. However, greater discrepancies were obtained for sensible (up to 17%) and latent (up to 23%) heat fluxes at spatial resolutions coarser than 30 × 30 m due to the aggregation of non-linear components, and to the inclusion of non-agricultural areas in such aggregation. Results obtained confirm the good performance of METRIC model when used with high spatial resolution imagery, whereas they warn of some major errors in crop evapotranspiration estimation when medium or large scales are used.