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spatstat or R alternative to ESRI Point Density Tool?

I am trying to figure if it is best possible way to replicate ESRI point density tool in spatstat R package.

I got bunch of archaeological sites location with associated size and would like to compute surface with hectare per square km (magnitude-per-unit area as in ERSI tool) to track changes through time. I used spatstat density.ppp (with ppp rescaled to km) function to create point intensity per unit area surfaces, but I am not sure whether I should be using either weights argument in density.ppp or smooth.ppp or just use any kind of focal analysis function to get the hectare per km2 surface, which I understand ESRI point density tool is doing.

Solution

  • Use the spatstat function density.ppp with the weights argument giving the associated size of each site. That is,

    density(X, weights=w)

    where X is a point pattern object of class ppp, and w is a numeric vector of length equal to npoints(X) containing the associated sizes of the sites in the same order.

    See page 173-174 of the spatstat book