Spatial analysis
Spatial analysis or spatial statistics includes all of the formal techniques which studies entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties. Spatial analysis includes a species of techniques, numerous still in their early development, using different analytic approaches in addition to applied in fields as diverse as astronomy, with its studies of the placement of galaxies in the cosmos, to chip fabrication engineering, with its use of "place & route" algorithms to defining complex wiring structures. In a more restricted sense, spatial analysis is the technique applied to managers at the human scale, most notably in the analysis of geographic data or transcriptomics data.
Complex issues arise in spatial analysis, numerous of which are neither clearly defined nor completely resolved, but work the basis for current research. The most fundamental of these is the problem of defining the spatial location of the entities being studied.
Classification of the techniques of spatial analysis is difficult because of the large number of different fields of research involved, the different essential approaches which can be chosen, and the many forms the data can take.