1 Spatial data

There are three basic kinds of spatial data that I’ll try to introduce today:

1. Geostatistical data: measurements of a continuous phenomenon, which is observed at some set of points. Rongelap Island radioactivity. gstat package.
2. Areal data: each observation corresponds to an area, like a county or a raster cell.
3. Point data: arises from watching an area to see where and how often some event will occur.

Geostatistical and areal data are more closely related to each other than point data because both of them deal with values that you go to a particular place and measure.