Settlement geography · fieldwork

Nearest Neighbour Surveyor

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Blue pin (study centre) Red study box Working area Counted building Excluded — box edge cuts it

1

Screenshot

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Must show the scale bar and a blue pin roughly in the middle of your study area.

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PNG or JPG · click, drop, or paste

Tip: copy a screenshot (Win Shift+S / Mac ⌘⇧4) then press Ctrl/⌘+V anywhere.

2

Scale

needed

The scale bar is found automatically on upload — just check its real length below. Or click its two ends yourself. The study box is sized from this.

Real length

Unit

Resolution—

3

Pin & study box

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The blue pin nearest the centre is found automatically, then a red box of the size below is drawn around it. Reposition the pin by clicking if needed.

Box size

Measured as

Study box—

4

Buildings

—

Sample up to 3 building shades (e.g. white-grey and pale-yellow roofs), then detect. A building matching any sampled shade counts; anything the red box edge cuts through is excluded.

Colour tolerance8

Min size (m²)

Max size (m²)

Counted / excluded—

Nearest-neighbour sample

A random draw of the buildings inside the box; each value is the straight-line distance to that building's closest neighbour. The sample size is always reduced to a multiple of 2.

Target n

Building

Distance

Copied — paste into a cell

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How it works. The blue pin fixes the centre of the study area; the red box is drawn to a fixed real-world size using your scale, so it is measured, not eyeballed. A building is counted only if it lies wholly inside the box — any building the box edge cuts through is dropped, as Nearest Neighbour Analysis requires. Nearest-neighbour distances are measured centroid-to-centroid, in metres, against every counted building. The table shows a random sample: it aims for your target (20), and whenever that many aren't available it steps down to the largest even count so the total is always a multiple of 2. A smaller box yields a smaller sample — adjust the box size in step 3 to capture more or fewer buildings. Always verify the scale against a known feature before relying on the numbers.

Site log

Record each site's sample size (n), Rₙ, Z-score and significance here, then copy the whole log into Excel. The log is kept when you change screenshots — record one site, load the next, and record again.

Site no. / name

Site	n	R_n	Z-score	Significant?

Copied — paste into a cell

No sites recorded yet. Set a site number above and press Record Rₙ — the current site's Rₙ value is added to the log.