Nearest neighbour analysis

Rena

Hi,

I am trying to use (nearest neighbor analysis) in the context of malaria cases, and I have the following inquiries please to help me understand it as am building my knowledge about it and the online information I came across was confusing:

• Can I have good thorough and easy to understand resources explaining: Average nearest neighbor (ANN) analysis, and other spatial analyses used as an alternative for spatial clustering identification and quantification, please?
• what is the difference between ANN, K-nearest neighbor (KNN), and K-function?
• is "K function" is the same as "KNN"??Here is an article about KNN and a link explaining K-function, I am not sure if they are the same thing or different? https://towardsdatascience.com/point-pattern-analysis-of-location-data-1346f318865dhttps://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.570.5418&rep=rep1&type=pdf
• what is the difference between ANN and KNN? 
• KNN do assess cluster from a time and space perspective, meaning it assess clustering by evaluating whether the points/cases are near in location and whether the points are nearby by the time of occurrence.
  • wouldn't that require my data to have the exact time each infection case occurred? 
  • Does ANN consider both "Time" and space? and if yes, would having all cases diagnosed at the SAME time through a cross-sectional survey be a limitation to the ANN test?  

• what are the assumptions underlying and controlling ANN? and its limitations?

I appreciate any feedback and thank you for your time and support.

 

danretired

Have you looked at the offerings with the help documents under the Spatial Statistics toolsets?

An overview of the Spatial Statistics toolbox—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

A couple of sample links

An overview of the Analyzing Patterns toolset—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

How Average Nearest Neighbor works—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation