ejanalysis/proxistat: Create a Proximity Score in Each Census Unit, Based on Distances to Specified Points (as in EPA's EJScreen tool, for example)

This package can create a proximity score for each spatial unit like a Census block or block group or tract, to quantify the distances to -- and the distance-weighted count of -- nearby points of interest. Those specified geographic points could be sources of air pollution, for example, where greater proximity could be a simple proxy for greater risk of exposure. The points could alternatively be amenities, where greater proximity is better. These proximity scores can be used in environmental justice (EJ) analysis to analyze the distribution of or mean of proximities to hazardous waste sites, by community or for each demographic group. For example, one could explore whether and to what degree the average Hispanic or Latino individual compared to the rest of the US population on average lives closer to hazardous waste treatment, storage, or disposal facilities. Key functions: get.distances() finds distances quickly within an optional search radius get.distances.all() to find distances from all frompoints to alltopoints. The function proxistat() creates a proximity score that quantifies, for each spatial unit like a Census block group, how many topoints are nearby and how close they are. This package uses the sp package for the basic distance calculation (and also had older functions to calculate distances). Also see the EJAM package in development by EPA, for fast distance stats. -distances between all points (from one list of points to another), -distances to all points found within some maximum search radius, -distance to and identity of the nearest single point, etc. For any imported/suggested packages not on CRAN, see http://ejanalysis.github.io

install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("ejanalysis/proxistat")