A Correlation Analysis Method for Geographical Object Flows from a Geoeconomic Perspective

Geographic object flow is the reason behind the relationship of geographic units. There are interactions in the process of dynamic change of a geographic object flow, and its regularity, which can reflect the relationship or pattern of geographic units in a region. In this paper, an association rule mining method for the geographic object flow linkage process is studied from a geoeconomics perspective. Additionally, an association rule mining algorithm with hierarchical constraints is proposed. Data segmentation is performed according to the time series characteristics of geographic object flow data. The basic attributes for the association rule mining are determined based on the basic parameters of geographic object flows, and a database for the association rule mining is formed according to the characteristics of the hierarchical structure of the geographic object flows. Based on the obtained data, the association rule mining algorithm with hierarchical constraints obtained using a parent–child matrix is improved by adding the Apriori algorithm. With the Indo-Pacific region as an example, the trade flow association rules for 25 countries in the region from 2010 to 2021 are selected. In addition, a mathematical statistical analysis of the strongly associated mined trade flows and geoeconomic factors is conducted in terms of both a basic feature analysis of trade flow associations and a country-oriented trade flow association analysis by considering domain knowledge. The effectiveness of the method has been evaluated from various perspectives such as correlation analysis, mathematical statistics, and comparison with the findings of existing studies and proved the validity of the method.