Advanced Spatial Analysis

Spatial Analysis Tools

The NICHD GIS Population Science Program maintains contacts with leading academic and commercial producers of software of importance to research on the spatial dimensions of traditional demographic themes. The links below provide access to software tools of special value in depicting and analyzing demographic patterns spatially.

If you have suggestions to include on this site please send them to Stephen Matthews.

Featured Tool

GeoDa™
GeoDa is designed to implement techniques for exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) on lattice data (points and polygons). GeoDa provides a user friendly and graphical interface to methods of descriptive spatial data analysis, such as spatial autocorrelation statistics and indicators of spatial outliers. This software was developed by Luc Anselin and his associates as part of the CSISS Program of the Spatial Analysis Laboratory in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. GeoDa will be one of the primary software tools used in the GIS Population Science Workshops.

Exploring Spatial Data with GeoDa: A Workbook, the first complete version of the GeoDa™ workbook is now available for free download (PDF, 5.1MB). It contains 244 pages with 25 chapters of step by step guidelines and exercises to learn all the features of GeoDa, including spatial regression analysis.

  • ClusterSeer
    ClusterSeer provides statistics for evaluating disease clusters in space and time.
  • CrimeStat
    A spatial statistics program for the analysis of crime incident locations and other data represented as points.
  • Geographically Weighted Regression
    Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) is a statistical technique that allows variations in relationships over space to be measured within a single modelling framework. The output from GWR is a set of surfaces, each surface depicting the spatial variation of a relationship.
  • GeoVista Studio Project
    An open software development environment for geospatial data analysis, exploratory spatial data analysis and knowledge discovery.
  • R-Geo
    This collection of web pages is intended to be a guide to some of the resources for the analysis of spatial data using R, and other associated software.
  • S+SpatialStats
    Add on to the S-Plus statistical package to carry out point pattern analysis, geostatistical analysis and spatial regression in an object-oriented framework.
  • Spatial Analysis Utilities
    The main aim of Spatial Analysis Utilities (SAU) is to accomplish in a quick and easy manner the entire quantitative process. The philosophy of the software is to provide conclusive statistical data to novice GIS users with just a few clicks.
  • STARS: Space Time Analysis of Regional Systems
    STARS is an exploratory data analysis package designed for variables measured on geographical units over time.
  • Tobler's Flow Mapper
    Flow Mapper allows for depiction of flows on a map by arrows scaled to the levels of interaction among spatial units (e.g., migration flows).
  • Winbugs-Geobugs
    Estimation of models (including spatial models) by means of the Gibbs sampler/Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods.