Integrating spatial data analysis functionalities in a GIS environment: Spatial Analysis using ArcGIS Engine and R (SAAR)

Spatial data analysis (SDA) tools to efficiently handle and explore spatial data have become readily available. Although these SDA tools have their own strengths and purposes, they suffer from limited support in terms of a development environment offering easy customization and high extensibility, a strength of open source software. This article presents a standalone software package for SDA in a geographic information system (GIS) environment, called Spatial Analysis using ArcGIS Engine and R (SAAR), which provides an integrated GIS and SDA environment. A set of SDA tools in SAAR utilizes functions in R using R.NET, while other tools were developed in .NET independent of R. SAAR provides an efficient working environment for both general and advanced GIS users. For general GIS users with limited programming skills, SAAR furnishes advanced SDA tools in a popular ArcGIS environment with graphical user interfaces. For advanced GIS users, SAAR offers an extensible GIS platform to help them customize and implement SDA functions with relatively little development effort. This article demonstrates some functionalities of SAAR using census data for Texas counties.