What is Spatial Analysis?

Spatial analysis applies geographic methods to data to find patterns, relationships, and answers to location questions. Core operations: buffer, overlay, intersect, proximity, network analysis, hotspot, and interpolation.

Examples in the Netherlands: which BAG buildings lie in a flood raster, overlap between BGT roads and own assets, travel time from a point. GeoApps and GIS software offer visual and computational workflows.

Spatial analysis is not the same as analytics or map display alone. It produces new geometry or attributes from existing layers; geoprocessing is the engine, spatial analysis the broader field.