Measuring Distance to Resources

Abstract

Mapping counts or rates of residents by areal geographies is useful for visualizing distributions across regions. However, this approach limits the understanding of resource proximity to visual approximations. Taking advantage of exact location information in a geographic information system (GIS), direct proximity statistics can be created by geoprocessing residence locations to population centers. In this article, we demonstrate how to geoprocess location information to create a table of the distances between resident locations and the nearest population centers to gain a more precise understanding of how far people live, as groups, from their closest resource centers.