R: Wrapper for Distance Matrix Computation

fields wrapper {spam} | R Documentation

## Wrapper for Distance Matrix Computation

### Description

These functions are simple wrappers to `nearest.dist` to be used in `fields`.

### Usage

    spam_rdist( x1, x2, delta = 1)
    spam_rdist.earth( x1, x2, delta = 1, miles=TRUE, R=NULL)

### Arguments

`x1` | Matrix of first set of locations where each row gives the coordinates of a particular point.
`x2` | Matrix of second set of locations where each row gives the coordinates of a particular point.
`delta` | only distances smaller than `delta` are recorded, see Details.
`miles` | For great circle distance: If true distances are in statute miles if false distances in kilometers.
`R` | Radius to use for sphere to find spherical distances. If `NULL` the radius is either in miles or kilometers depending on the values of the miles argument. If `R=1` then distances are of course in radians.

### Details

These functions are wrappers to `rdist` and `rdist.earth` in `fields`. They are used to simplify the use of sparse matrices in functions like `mKrig`.

For great circle distance, the matrices `x1` and `x2` contain the degrees longitudes in the first and the degrees latitudes in the second column. `delta` is in degrees. Hence to restrict to distances smaller than `delta.km`, one has to specify `delta=delta.km*360/(6378.388*2*pi)`.

### Value

A `spam` object containing the distances spanned between zero and `delta`. The sparse matrix may contain many zeros (e.g., collocated data). However, to calculate covariances, these zeros are essential.

### Author(s)

Reinhard Furrer

### See Also

`nearest.dist`

### Examples

    ## Not run:
    require(fields)
    look <- mKrig(x,Y, Covariance="Wendland", dimension=2, k=1,
        cov.args=list( Distance='spam_rdist'))

    ## End(Not run)

[Package spam version 2.1-1 Index]