Enhancing bivariate spatial association analysis of network-constrained geographical flows: An incremental scale-based method

Measuring bivariate spatial association plays a key role in understanding the spatial relationships between two types of geographical flow (hereafter referred to as “flow”). However, existing studies usually use multiple scales to analyze bivariate associations of flows, leading to the results at larger scales can be strongly affected by the results at smaller scales. Moreover, the planar space assumption of most existing studies is unsuitable for network-constrained flows. To solve these problems, a network incremental flow cross K-function (NIFK) is developed in this study by extending the cross K-function for points into a flow context. Specifically, two versions of NIFK were developed in this study: the global version to check whether bivariate associations exist in the whole study area and the local version to identify specific locations where associations occur. Experiments on three simulated datasets demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method over an available alternative method. A case study conducted using Xiamen taxi and ride-hailing service datasets demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed method. The detected bivariate spatial association provides deep insights for understanding the competition between taxi services and ride-hailing services.