ClustGeo: an R package for hierarchical clustering with spatial constraints
This is an incremental method for researchers and practitioners needing spatially contiguous clustering in fields like geography or ecology.
The paper tackles the problem of hierarchical clustering with spatial constraints by proposing a Ward-like algorithm that minimizes a convex combination of feature and constraint dissimilarities, illustrated with an R package on a real dataset.
In this paper, we propose a Ward-like hierarchical clustering algorithm including spatial/geographical constraints. Two dissimilarity matrices $D_0$ and $D_1$ are inputted, along with a mixing parameter $α\in [0,1]$. The dissimilarities can be non-Euclidean and the weights of the observations can be non-uniform. The first matrix gives the dissimilarities in the "feature space" and the second matrix gives the dissimilarities in the "constraint space". The criterion minimized at each stage is a convex combination of the homogeneity criterion calculated with $D_0$ and the homogeneity criterion calculated with $D_1$. The idea is then to determine a value of $α$ which increases the spatial contiguity without deteriorating too much the quality of the solution based on the variables of interest i.e. those of the feature space. This procedure is illustrated on a real dataset using the R package ClustGeo.