Improved Local Indicators of Spatial Association Analysis for Zero-Heavy Crack Cocaine Seizure Data

Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) analysis is a useful tool for analyzing and extracting meaningful insights from geographic data. It provides informative statistical analysis that highlights areas of high and low activity. However, LISA analysis methods may not be appropriate for zero-heavy data, as without the correct mathematical context, the meaning of the patterns identified by the analysis may be distorted. We demonstrate these issues through statistical analysis and provide the appropriate context for interpreting LISA results for zero-heavy data. We then propose an improved LISA analysis method for spatial data with a majority of zero values. This work constitutes a possible path to a more appropriate understanding of the underlying spatial relationships. Applying our proposed methodology to crack cocaine seizure data in the United States, we show how our improved methods identify different spatial patterns, which in our context could lead to different real-world law enforcement strategies. As LISA analysis is a popular statistical approach that supports policy analysis and design, and as zero-heavy data are common in these scenarios, we provide a framework that is tailored to zero-heavy contexts, improving interpretations and providing finer categorization of observed data, ultimately leading to better decisions in multiple fields where spatial data are foundational. History: Rema Padman served as the senior editor for this article. Funding: This study is supported by the National Science Foundation [Award D-ISN:2039862]. Data Ethics & Reproducibility Note: The code capsule is available on Code Ocean at https://doi.org/10.24433/CO.6070476.v2 and in the e-Companion to this article (available at https://doi.org/10.1287/ijds.2024.0031 ).