Spatial neighborhood matrix computation: Inverse distance weighted versus binary contiguity

Paper presented at Geo-Spatial Crossroad GI_Forum, Salzburg, Austria.

A particular GIS aspect is the existence of the spatial neighborhood weighted matrix (W) needed for their assessment and commonly setup by the binary or inverse distance weight (IDW)contiguity. This article recommends that if the former approach fulfills W specification quite well, the distance decay contiguity of IDW, by itself, is blinded to its natural neighbors because the exponent of 1/dexp already underlies the considered number of neighbors. In a more wise approach, IDW should be used mutually with the binary one.