How Emerging Hot Spot Analysis Works
Emerging Hot Spot Analysis is a somewhat simple process. It works by first
calculating the Gi* statistic for each location in each time period (time-slice).
Next, for each location across all time-periods, the Mann-Kendall trend test
is done to identify any temporal trend in Gi* values over all time periods.
Additionally, each location is classified into one of seventeen categories based
on ESRI's emerging hot spot classification criteria.
The Mann-Kendall trend test is done using Kendall::MannKendall()
. Kendall
is not installed with sfdep and should be installed prior to use.
Using your own neighbors and weights
If you would like to use your own neighbors and weights, they must be created
in the geometry
context of a spacetime object. The arguments nb_col
and wt_col
must both be populated in order to use your own neighbor and weights
definitions.
Time lagged neighbors
In addition to identifying neighbors in space, emerging hotspot analysis also
incorporates the same observations from k
periods ago-called a time lag. If
the time lag k is 1 and the unit of time is month, the neighbors for the
calculation of Gi* would include the spatial neighbors' values at time t
and the same spatial neighbors' values at time t-1
. If k = 2
, it would include
t
, t-1
, and t-2
.
Missing values
Presently, there is no method of missing value handling. If there are missing
values, the emerging hot spot analysis will fail. Be sure to fill or omit
time-slices with missing values prior to using emerging hot spot analysis.