Spatial Spread Sampling Using Weakly Associated Vectors

Geographical data are generally autocorrelated. In this case, it is preferable to select spread units. In this paper, we propose a new method for selecting well-spread samples from a finite spatial population with equal or unequal inclusion probabilities. The proposed method is based on the definition of a spatial structure by using a stratification matrix. Our method exactly satisfies given inclusion probabilities and provides samples that are very well spread. A set of simulations shows that our method outperforms other existing methods such as the generalized random tessellation stratified or the local pivotal method. Analysis of the variance on a real dataset shows that our method is more accurate than these two. Furthermore, a variance estimator is proposed.