“ Incorporating Spatial Proximity in Cluster Analysis ”

1. Seminar by Dr. Philip Bermingham “Incorporating Spatial Proximity in Cluster Analysis” Dr. Philip Bermingham is a Senior Analyst at Environics Analytics, a leading edge consulting firm head officed in Toronto.  As a member of the Product Development and Custom Analytics Team, he develops custom models and creative solutions for EA's clients.  Prior to joining Environics he worked as Senior Analyst at the Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity (CSCA), Ryerson University and within the business GIS industry. Philip holds a Masters degree from the Joint Program in Spatial Analysis at Ryerson University and University of Toronto. His areas of specialism include applied GIS and spatial modeling, statistics and programming. This presentation outlines findings from research that focused on incorporating spatial proximity measures within a traditional cluster analysis-based segmentation to produce geographically contiguous and homogeneous regions.  Written in R, an open source statistical package, spatial proximity was incorporated within the k-means function.  To illustrate the usefulness of an algorithm that trades off group homogeneity and the geographical compactness of groups, its use in developing telephone book territories for Yellow Pages Canada will be discussed. Thursday 9th August 2007 @ 4pm Conference Room Check http://ncg.nuim.ie/ for details