Spatial operations play a crucial role in location data analysis. In fact, they are what distinguishes location data analysis from other data analysis. Spatial analysis derives insights from input data using geometry functions and operators. There are a number of different spatial operations, including buffer analysis, spatial joins, overlay analysis, and topological operations (such as intersect and contain). We will use the Foursquare dataset to apply spatial operations in a real-world project.
The NYC Foursquare Check-In dataset first appeared in Fine-Grained Preference-Aware Location Search Leveraging Crowdsourced Digital Footprints by Dingqi Yang, Daqing Zhang, Zhiyong Yu, and Zhiwen Yu, from LBSNs. This was released before the 2013 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2013), September 8...