In Chapter Chapter 6 "Data Characteristics and Visualization", we discussed different ways to query, classify, and summarize information in attribute tables. These methods are indispensable for understanding the basic quantitative and qualitative trends of a dataset. However, they don’t take particular advantage of the greatest strength of a geographic information system (GIS), notably the explicit spatial relationships. Spatial analysis is a fundamental component of a GIS that allows for an in-depth study of the topological and geometric properties of a dataset or datasets. In this chapter, we discuss the basic spatial analysis techniques for vector datasets.