Coerce Data to SaTScan Neighbors Table

Creates an ss_tbl object of type "nbr" (SaTScan Non-Euclidean Neighbors File). A neighbors file defines, for each centroid location, an ordered list of neighboring locations ranked by closeness. SaTScan constructs candidate clusters by progressively expanding each row (centroid, then centroid + first neighbor, then + second neighbor, etc.) until the row ends.

This constructor expects neighbors in a wide format (one row per centroid, multiple neighbor columns in rank order). It preserves the input data and records neighbor_cols so the writer can emit the correct SaTScan ASCII structure without reshaping user data.

Usage

ss_nbr(data, loc_id, neighbor_cols)

Arguments

data

A data frame containing neighbor lists.

loc_id

Column name for the location ID.

neighbor_cols

Character vector of column names representing neighbors.

Value

An ss_tbl object of type "nbr".

SaTScan File Specification

The Neighbors File has the following structure: <LocationID> <Neighbor1ID> <Neighbor2ID> ...

• LocationID: Identifier for the location.

• NeighborIDs: One or more columns, each representing a neighbor of the LocationID. The order of these columns matters for SaTScan's interpretation of neighbor hierarchy.