Many things in life naturally tend to cluster. Housing, businesses, trees, and crimes are all examples of clustering. The degree of this clustering is important. The tools in the Mapping Clusters toolset don't just answer the question "Is there clustering?", but they also answer the question "Where is the clustering?"

The Mapping Clusters tools are helpful in identifying statistically significant hot and cold spots, spatial outliers, as well as locating similar features, and grouping features. This toolset can also be used to define actions that should take place based on the location of clusters. For example, the Mapping Clusters tools can be used to identify areas of high crime activity (burglaries, for example) that can be useful in allocating police officers to deal with this activity in those areas. While these clusters don't typically identify why a phenomena is occurring, they can often provide clues.

The tools in this toolset allow us to...