[R-sig-Geo] Management & Processing of Neighborhood Data

[Melch, Simon]

Dear list members,

I'm looking for a way to process neighborhood data. I do not aim at running a fully fledged spatial data analysis. Rather I'd like to assess a jurisdiction's propensity for making a certain decision by taking into account properties of its neighbors.

I rely on questionnaire data for the decision making units (DMU, in my case: municipalities). Due to a response rate < 1, I do not have a full (spatial) sample on the side of the decision making units / dependent variable. However, I have a full sample of neighbors and their properties.

I basically want to employ some kind of spatially informed explanatory variables. For some variables (eg. debt level of surrounding municipalities) implementation as spatially lagged variable seems to be straightforward. Other would require calculations (the degree of a politically friendly environment between DMU and its neighbors, eg. as measured by the number of neighbors with the same strongest party).

My question refers to the latter: Do you know of a routine which facilitates the management and further processing of neighborhood data?

Having only basic knowledge of R, GIS & spatial data analysis, I am still puzzled about where/how to start. I scanned spdep without success. I suppose my quest might result in some handwork...

Any hint is welcome!

Thanks,
Simon




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