In GIS distance analysis, which distance refers to the distance along raster cell sides from one point to another?

• A. Manhattan distance
• B. Euclidean distance
• C. Chebyshev distance
• D. Hamming distance

Answer: (A)

When movement is restricted to traveling along the sides of raster cells (the four neighboring directions: north, south, east, west), the distance between two points is counted by how many step-by-step moves you must take along those grid lines. This adds up as the sum of the absolute differences in their grid coordinates: |dx| plus |dy|. That is the Manhattan distance. For example, to go from a point to another 3 units over and 4 units up, you would take 3 horizontal steps and 4 vertical steps, totaling 7.

Euclidean distance measures the direct straight-line distance between two points, not the path length constrained to grid edges. Chebyshev distance assumes you can also move diagonally in a single step, taking the maximum of |dx| and |dy| as the distance. Hamming distance counts differences in corresponding positions of sequences rather than spatial distance on a grid.