Constrained agglomerative hierarchical classification

摘要

This paper presents a method of classification taking account of a contiguity constraint. This procedure is applicable to all data sets represented in two distinct spaces, one of which is defined by the introduction of a relation of contiguity. The basic idea is to favour the pairs of clusters which are close in this space (i.e. contiguous). In practice, the hierarchy depends on the choice of a contiguity threshold equal to the maximal distance beyond which two points are not contiguous.Following the description of the algorithm, one will find results dealing with the influence of the constraint and with the estimation of the contiguity threshold.To illustrate this paper, classifications of ground points distributed on a plane area and characterized by geochemical descriptors are given.