Lesson 4: Spatial Weights and Applications

Published

July 21, 2024

Modified

September 7, 2025

Computing spatial weight is an essential step toward measuring the strength of the spatial relationships between objects. In this lesson, the basic concept of spatial weight will be introduced. This is followed by a discussion of methods to compute spatial weights.

Content

  • Tobler’s First law of Geography
  • Principles of Spatial Autocorrelation
  • Concepts of Spatial Proximity and Spatial Weights
    • Contiguity-Based Spatial Weights: Rook’s & Queen’s
    • Distance-Band Spatial Weights: fixed and adaptive
  • Applications of Spatial Weights
    • Spatially lagged variables
    • Geographically Weighted Summary Statistics
    • Spatially lagged rates

Lesson Slides and Hands-on Notes

Self-reading Before Meet-up

To read before class:

Alternatively

  • Chapter 9: Modelling Areal Data of Applied Spatial Data Analysis with R (2nd Edition). This book is available in smu digital library. Until section 9.3.1.

References

All About R