ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Cost distance analysis

Okay kiddo, let's learn about cost distance analysis!

Imagine you want to go from your house to grandma's house, but there are a lot of obstacles in your way, like parks, rivers, and hills. Each of these obstacles makes it harder for you to get to grandma's house, and every time you encounter an obstacle, you have to walk a little farther.

Now let's say you assign a cost to each obstacle. For example, crossing a river might cost you 10 extra steps, walking up a hill could cost 20 extra steps, and going through a park might cost 5 extra steps.

Cost distance analysis is a way to figure out the total cost of getting from one place to another, taking all these obstacles into account. You start by picking a starting point (like your house) and a destination (like grandma's house), and then you use a map to figure out what obstacles you'll encounter along the way.

As you move from one point to another, you add up the cost of each obstacle you encounter, and that gives you the total cost of getting from your starting point to your destination. With cost distance analysis, you can also find the shortest or fastest route between two points by finding the path with the lowest overall cost.

So, in short, cost distance analysis is like figuring out how much harder it is to reach a place because of obstacles in the way, and finding the best route by adding up those obstacles' cost.