This work focuses the relevance of Geographical Information System (GIS) as research tool in supporting decisions. The paper will present a methodology to analyze the production specialization in agriculture. This methodology, called distance counts (Unwin, 1982), belongs to the “point pattern analysis” and, precisely, it combines both distance and density into a useful analytic device for the spatial analysis. It is presented by David Unwin in Spatial Analysis, in the chapter on maps for points; he uses the distance counts as descriptive indicator of spatial point pattern. The instrument has been refined and used several times in more analysis, above all relating to urban gravitation and metropolitan tertiary, by Gerardo Massimi (1982, 1999). The distance counts transforms point into areal data, giving back a measure of density, according to a methodology which would exclude pre-instituted boundaries, but it uses the areas formed by circles of radius equal to a significant extent in a local context in consideration. We are going to apply the method of distance counts, in an original way, to the agriculture sector. We will use it as an useful instrument in the spatial analysis: it can equalize more municipalities having different size and it can found functional areas to the local scale where there are prevalent crops. Every prevalent crop can be associate to production specialization in the reference area. In fact, to obtain a fair comparison of agricultural surface for crop we should compare municipal areas having the same land mass, which is impossible for the Italian cities. This obstacle can be overcome through a new and particularly application of distance counts, used to create “artificial” smoothing tile municipal authorities. This is done by calculating equalization for distance, using circles whose area is equal to the surface of the card's largest administrative area considered. In this case, each centroid centroids represent himself and entering the radius of the circle with area equal to the larger administrative card. This study will be applied to the Lazio with data of Census of Agriculture relating to the utilization of soil. In this way, we use a statistical methodology, applied to the GIS instrument, in order to identify probable choices to adopt.
Spatial Analysis in Agricultural Census Data Management: The Distance Counts
DE VINCENZO, Domenico;
2011-01-01
Abstract
This work focuses the relevance of Geographical Information System (GIS) as research tool in supporting decisions. The paper will present a methodology to analyze the production specialization in agriculture. This methodology, called distance counts (Unwin, 1982), belongs to the “point pattern analysis” and, precisely, it combines both distance and density into a useful analytic device for the spatial analysis. It is presented by David Unwin in Spatial Analysis, in the chapter on maps for points; he uses the distance counts as descriptive indicator of spatial point pattern. The instrument has been refined and used several times in more analysis, above all relating to urban gravitation and metropolitan tertiary, by Gerardo Massimi (1982, 1999). The distance counts transforms point into areal data, giving back a measure of density, according to a methodology which would exclude pre-instituted boundaries, but it uses the areas formed by circles of radius equal to a significant extent in a local context in consideration. We are going to apply the method of distance counts, in an original way, to the agriculture sector. We will use it as an useful instrument in the spatial analysis: it can equalize more municipalities having different size and it can found functional areas to the local scale where there are prevalent crops. Every prevalent crop can be associate to production specialization in the reference area. In fact, to obtain a fair comparison of agricultural surface for crop we should compare municipal areas having the same land mass, which is impossible for the Italian cities. This obstacle can be overcome through a new and particularly application of distance counts, used to create “artificial” smoothing tile municipal authorities. This is done by calculating equalization for distance, using circles whose area is equal to the surface of the card's largest administrative area considered. In this case, each centroid centroids represent himself and entering the radius of the circle with area equal to the larger administrative card. This study will be applied to the Lazio with data of Census of Agriculture relating to the utilization of soil. In this way, we use a statistical methodology, applied to the GIS instrument, in order to identify probable choices to adopt.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
