Identifying patterns in spatial information: A survey of methods

Explosive growth in geospatial data and the emergence of new spatial technologies emphasize the need for automated discovery of spatial knowledge. Spatial data mining is the process of discovering interesting and previously unknown, but potentially useful patterns from large spatial databases. The complexity of spatial data and implicit spatial relationships limits the usefulness of conventional data mining techniques for extracting spatial patterns. In this paper, we explore the emerging field of spatial data mining, focusing on different methods to extract patterns from spatial information. We conclude with a look at future research needs.