Finding Meaning in Points, Areas and Surfaces: Spatial Analysis in R
| Presented: | Wednesday, June 13, 2012 |
| Presenter: | David Unwin, Professor, Statistics.com |
| Click here to download the presentation PDF and replay files. |
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Everything happens somewhere and spatial analysis attempts to use location as an explanatory variable. Such analysis is made complex by the very many ways we habitually record spatial location, the complexity of spatial data structures, and the wide variety of possible domain-driven questions we might ask. One option is to develop and use software for specific types of spatial data, another is to use a purpose-built geographical information system (GIS), but determined work by R enthusiasts has resulted in a multiplicity of packages in the R environment that can also be used.
In this webinar, David will present three real-world examples of how spatial statistics are used, each illustrating the analysis of a particular class of spatial data (points, areas and surfaces) with a particular R package (spatstat, maptools, sp, spdep, gstat). He will show the flexibility and power that are gained when the R route is chosen. Join us to explore these uses of spatial data:
- In geology, we attempt to answer the question ‘are the glacial hills called drumlins randomly distributed?
- In epidemiology we ask the question ‘where is there an unusual incidence of a disease?
- And in environmental science we ask ‘what is the value of this spatially continuous variable at this location?
David will also touch on other possibilities: there are packages for lines and network data, for image data, and for easy ‘mash ups onto Google ™ Maps and Earth.
Finding Meaning in Points, Areas and Surfaces: Spatial Analysis in R
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About the Speaker
 David Unwin |
Until his retirement in 2002, David Unwin was Professor of Geography at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK, where he retains an Emeritus Chair in the subject. His work using and developing spatial statistics in research stretches back some 40 years, and he has authored over a hundred academic papers in the field, together with a series of texts, of which the more recent are his Geographic Information Analysis, 2nd edition (with D. O'Sullivan, 2010) and a series of edited collections at the interface between geography and computer science, on Visualization in GIS (Hearnshaw and Unwin, 1994), Spatial Analytical Perspectives on GIS (Fischer, Scholten and Unwin, 1996), Virtual Reality in Geography (Fisher and Unwin, 2002, and representation issues in Re-presenting GIS (Fisher and Unwin, 2005). Having developed the world's first wholly internet-delivered Master's program in GIS in 1998, David has considerable experience of teaching and tutoring online, which are detailed in his chapters of the book Teaching GIS&T in Higher Education (Unwin, Foote, Tate and DiBiase, 2012). In 1999 the UK Association for Geographic Information awarded him its Past Presidents Prize and in 2005 the US University Consortium for Geographic Information Science awarded him its Educator of the Year prize. Earlier this year David was awarded the Ron F Abler Honor of the Association of American Geographers in recognition of his distinguished service to teaching and research in geography. |