A radial analyses can be thought of as simply a distance test between two sets of points.
Examples of radial analyses are:
- Determining which store is closest to each customer.
- Listing the five closest doctors to a potential client.
- Listing up to 20 store locations within 15 miles of a proposed site.
Radial analysis are generally performed on two sets of geocoded addresses. Commonly, one set of addresses represents store locations, while another set of addresses may be for current or potential customers. The Radial routines within the Spatial+ library finds all points that are within a given distance. The points are found in order of closest to furthest and there is no limit to the number of points that can be returned.