2024/09/26 by Paddy Gorry, Peter Mooney · 2 voices
Decision Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Geographic Information Systems Studies #Spatial and Panel Data Analysis #demographic modeling and climate adaptation
paper · doi:10.1080/15230406.2024.2377981
openalex publication_date 2024/09/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
We describe a Python-based software tool called RADIAN (RAnDom spatIal dAta geNerator) developed with the purpose of generating simple synthetic spatial datasets. These datasets can be used in many contexts such as teaching and learning of GIS, testing of spatial algorithms, testing and visualization approaches. This paper provides a motivation for the need for a tool such as RADIAN along with a survey of other similar approaches. The methodological component of how RADIAN generates synthetic spatial datasets is described. We describe experimental results from the comparison of RADIAN with QGIS, which is the most closely comparable tool available at the time of writing. Finally, we provide some conclusions on the impact and potential of RADIAN with some interesting avenues for future work and development. RADIAN is available as open-source software.