FORMA
Back
Forma, Vol. 33 (No. 1), pp. 7-11, 2018
doi:10.5047/forma.2018.002

Original Paper

Nearest Neighbor Distance in Three-Dimensional Space

Masashi Miyagawa

Department of Regional Social Management, University of Yamanashi, 4-4-37 Takeda, Kofu, Yamanashi 400-8510, Japan
E-mail address: mmiyagawa@yamanashi.ac.jp

(Received August 4, 2017; Accepted March 16, 2018)

Abstract. This paper deals with the nearest neighbor distance in three-dimensional space. The distribution of the nearest neighbor distance is derived for grid and random point patterns. The distance is measured as the Euclidean and rectilinear distances. An application of the nearest neighbor distance can be found in facility location problems. The nearest neighbor distance represents the service level of facility location. The distribution shows how the distance to the nearest facility is distributed in a study region, and is useful for facility location problems in three-dimensional space. The distribution of the kth nearest neighbor distance is also derived for the random pattern.

Keywords: Point Pattern, Grid Pattern, Random Pattern, Euclidean Distance, Rectilinear Distance


[Full text] (PDF 208 KB)