tract_distance_matrix: Build a Tract Distance Matrix for a State

In gsClusterDetect: Utilities for Geo-Spatial Cluster Detection and Significance Classification

Build a Tract Distance Matrix for a State

Description

Creates an all-pairs distance matrix between census tract centroids for a state, using state abbreviation input similar to zip_distance_matrix().

Usage

tract_distance_matrix(
  st,
  county = NULL,
  unit = c("miles", "kilometers", "meters"),
  use_cache = TRUE,
  ...
)

Arguments

st	Character scalar; 2-character USPS state abbreviation (for example, "MD").
county	A three-digit FIPS code (string) of the county or counties to subset on. This can also be a county name or vector of names.
unit	Character string; one of "miles" (default), "kilometers", or "meters".
use_cache	Logical; if TRUE, enables options(tigris_use_cache = TRUE).
...	arguments passed on to tigris::tracts

Value

A list with:

loc_vec

Character vector of tract GEOIDs (same order as matrix dimensions)

distance_matrix

Square numeric matrix of pairwise distances in requested units

Examples

md_dm <- tract_distance_matrix("MD")
dim(md_dm$distance_matrix)
md_dm_km <- tract_distance_matrix("MD", unit = "kilometers")

gsClusterDetect documentation built on July 27, 2026, 5:09 p.m.