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I have a number of sites around the globe, and they are not uniformly distributed. I would like to use some measure of remoteness, in order to compare sites that are more or less remote. I guess something like 1/sum(distances to other sites) would work, but I would first like to know whether there are any other standard metrics for measuring the remoteness of individual sites against a large population?

naught101
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    https://what-if.xkcd.com/72/ – Vince Jan 29 '18 at 04:10
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    It is not the same, but it is worth to see this question about the connectivity: https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/265330/finding-terminal-cities-on-the-map – Marco Jan 29 '18 at 07:25
  • Such a question!! You also could consider same cost of movement in your metric. Being spatially close does not mean it is easy to get there. Your measument should account for it. It is not the same to be 10 minutes away where there is fast and frequent public transport than being in a place you can reach only walking or riding an animal for a couple of days. – Marco Jan 29 '18 at 13:38
  • @Marco: you're assuming that I care about connectivity. I don't. I care about geographical similarity. – naught101 Jan 30 '18 at 05:41
  • @naught101 I do not assume anything really, but the definition of remoteness rise a nice question about its meaning. The top of a montain is almost always a remote place, so why? – Marco Jan 30 '18 at 16:23
  • @Marco it's not usually remote from other mountains though :P I get what you mean, remoteness is usually defined in terms of human population, but that's not what my question is about. I mean remoteness of one arbitrary entity from other entities in that same class. – naught101 Jan 31 '18 at 00:33

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I agree with the xkcd logic from Vince's comment - site furthest from any other site would be the most remote. (https://what-if.xkcd.com/72/)

Try this -

  • Generate a near table
  • Find the shortest distance for each site
  • Rate remoteness based on increasing shortest distance - i.e. if one site is 4km from its nearest site and a second site is 10km from its nearest site, the second site would be more remote by a factor of 10/4 or 2.5 times as remote.
jbalk
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