Foward sortation areas are defined by the first 3 characters in a postal code, and are a common unit of spatial analysis, especially when issues of PII are concerned. However, FSAs have issues that complicate their usage in spatial analysis: they are mutable, of varying sizes, and are often constituted of multi-part polygons.
This analysis focuses on comparing three metrics of assessing spatial assets:
- Centroids
- Homogenous zonal stats
- Population weighted zonal statistics
The comparison will be evaluated through an assessment of travel time to nearest long term facility.
- Long-term care facilities
- Global friction surface
- WorldPop gridded population
- FSAs
