Spatial analysis using clustering methods: Evaluating central point and median approaches

Spatial analysis is an important area of research which continues to make major contributions to the exploratory capabilities of geographical information systems. The use and application of classic clustering methods is being pursued as an exploratory approach for the analysis of spatially referenced data. Numerous potential clustering approaches exist, so research assessing the relative differences of these approaches is important. This paper evaluates the median and central points optimization based clustering approaches for use in the context of exploratory spatial data analysis. Functional and visual comparisons using three spatial applications across a range of cluster values are carried out. The empirical results suggest that these two clustering approaches identify very similar groupings. The significance of this finding is that the development of clustering tools for exploratory analysis may be limited to the median based approach given relative computational and solvability considerations. Received: 28 September 1998/Accepted: 9 August 1999