ABSTRACT
Spatial statistics analyzes the pattern, process, and relationship in spatial (geographic) data. Although built upon statistical concepts and methods, spatial statistics has some unique capacities that are beyond regular statistics. Some major spatial statistical concepts were raised several decades ago, but related applications were initially limited because of their requirements of intensive computation. Recent advancements in GIS and development of several free packages on spatial statistics have stimulated greater interests and wide usage. This chapter serves an overview of three fundamental tasks in spatial statistics: measuring geographic distributions, spatial cluster analysis, and spatial regression models.
