Abstract
In the real world, there are many kinds of phenomena that are represented by points on a network, such as traffic accidents on a street network. To analyse these phenomena, the basic point pattern methods (i.e. the nearest neighbour distance method, the quadrat method, the K-function method and the clumping method) defined on a plane (referred to as the planar basic point pattern methods) are extended to the basic point pattern methods on a network (referred to as the network basic point pattern methods). However, like the planar basic point pattern methods, the network basic point pattern methods assume a uniform network and this assumption is hard to accept when analysing actual phenomena. To overcome this limitation, this paper formulates a transformation, called the uniform network transformation, that transforms a non-uniform network into a uniform network. This transformation provides a simple procedure for analysing point patterns on non-uniform networks: first, a given non-uniform network is transformed into a uniform network; second, the network basic point pattern methods (which assume a uniform network) are applied to this transformed uniform network. No modification to the network basic point pattern methods is necessary. The paper also shows an actual application of this transformation to traffic accidents in Chosei, Japan.
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Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at a session in GIScience2000 held at Savannah, GA, USA, 2000, where we had valuable comments from the floor. We thank three anonymous referees, and Waldo Tobler, Alan Murry, and Ikuho Yamada for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. We also thank the Chiba Prefecture Police for offering traffic accident data. This study is partly supported by Grant-in-aid No. 10202201, Japanese Ministry of Education and Science.
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Okabe, A., Satoh, T. Uniform network transformation for points pattern analysis on a non-uniform network. J Geograph Syst 8, 25–37 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10109-005-0009-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10109-005-0009-2
Keywords
- Uniform network transformation
- Network spatial analysis
- Nearest neighbour distance method
- Quadrat method
- K-function method