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Irregular Shaped Spatial Clusters: Detection and Inference

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Encyclopedia of GIS

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Historical Background

The detection and inference of spatial clusters is a fundamental tool of geographical surveillance of phenomena like disease, crime, and environmental events (Lawson et al. 1999). Loosely speaking, a spatial cluster is a special location within a study area which contains more events than expected by pure chance. When the cluster is found to be significant, researchers may gather evidence to justify some plausible mechanisms of the studied events’ occurrence. On the other hand, when the spatial cluster is weak (i.e., nonsignificant), there is evidence that the studied phenomenon does not depend on its geographical location.

The most popular measure of the strength of a cluster is the spatial scan statistic (Kulldorff 1997). The circular scan, a particular case of the spatial scan statistic, is the most used method for the detection and inference of disease clusters. However, many spatial clusters do not have regular shape (e.g., noncircular- or non-square-shaped...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Campus Pampulha, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

    Luiz H. Duczmal

  2. Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil

    André L. F. Cançado

Authors
  1. Luiz H. Duczmal
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  2. André L. F. Cançado
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luiz H. Duczmal .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Shashi Shekhar

  2. Management Science and Information Systems Department, Rutgers Business School, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark, NJ, USA

    Hui Xiong

  3. Department of Management Sciences, Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Xun Zhou

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Duczmal, L.H., Cançado, A.L.F. (2017). Irregular Shaped Spatial Clusters: Detection and Inference. In: Shekhar, S., Xiong, H., Zhou, X. (eds) Encyclopedia of GIS. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17885-1_1544

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