209,350 research outputs found
Novel evaluation metrics for sparse spatio-temporal point process hotspot predictions - a crime case study
Many physical and sociological processes are represented as discrete events in time and space. These spatio-temporal point processes are often sparse, meaning that they cannot be aggregated and treated with conventional regression models. Models based on the point process framework may be employed instead for prediction purposes. Evaluating the predictive performance of these models poses a unique challenge, as the same sparseness prevents the use of popular measures such as the root mean squared error. Statistical likelihood is a valid alternative, but this does not measure absolute performance and is therefore difficult for practitioners and researchers to interpret. Motivated by this limitation, we develop a practical toolkit of evaluation metrics for spatio-temporal point process predictions. The metrics are based around the concept of hotspots, which represent areas of high point density. In addition to measuring predictive accuracy, our evaluation toolkit considers broader aspects of predictive performance, including a characterisation of the spatial and temporal distributions of predicted hotspots and a comparison of the complementarity of different prediction methods. We demonstrate the application of our evaluation metrics using a case study of crime prediction, comparing four varied prediction methods using crime data from two different locations and multiple crime types. The results highlight a previously unseen interplay between predictive accuracy and spatio-temporal dispersion of predicted hotspots. The new evaluation framework may be applied to compare multiple prediction methods in a variety of scenarios, yielding valuable new insight into the predictive performance of point process-based prediction
A Hierarchical Spatio-Temporal Statistical Model Motivated by Glaciology
In this paper, we extend and analyze a Bayesian hierarchical spatio-temporal
model for physical systems. A novelty is to model the discrepancy between the
output of a computer simulator for a physical process and the actual process
values with a multivariate random walk. For computational efficiency, linear
algebra for bandwidth limited matrices is utilized, and first-order emulator
inference allows for the fast emulation of a numerical partial differential
equation (PDE) solver. A test scenario from a physical system motivated by
glaciology is used to examine the speed and accuracy of the computational
methods used, in addition to the viability of modeling assumptions. We conclude
by discussing how the model and associated methodology can be applied in other
physical contexts besides glaciology.Comment: Revision accepted for publication by the Journal of Agricultural,
Biological, and Environmental Statistic
Multivariate Spatiotemporal Hawkes Processes and Network Reconstruction
There is often latent network structure in spatial and temporal data and the
tools of network analysis can yield fascinating insights into such data. In
this paper, we develop a nonparametric method for network reconstruction from
spatiotemporal data sets using multivariate Hawkes processes. In contrast to
prior work on network reconstruction with point-process models, which has often
focused on exclusively temporal information, our approach uses both temporal
and spatial information and does not assume a specific parametric form of
network dynamics. This leads to an effective way of recovering an underlying
network. We illustrate our approach using both synthetic networks and networks
constructed from real-world data sets (a location-based social media network, a
narrative of crime events, and violent gang crimes). Our results demonstrate
that, in comparison to using only temporal data, our spatiotemporal approach
yields improved network reconstruction, providing a basis for meaningful
subsequent analysis --- such as community structure and motif analysis --- of
the reconstructed networks
Lagrangian Time Series Models for Ocean Surface Drifter Trajectories
This paper proposes stochastic models for the analysis of ocean surface
trajectories obtained from freely-drifting satellite-tracked instruments. The
proposed time series models are used to summarise large multivariate datasets
and infer important physical parameters of inertial oscillations and other
ocean processes. Nonstationary time series methods are employed to account for
the spatiotemporal variability of each trajectory. Because the datasets are
large, we construct computationally efficient methods through the use of
frequency-domain modelling and estimation, with the data expressed as
complex-valued time series. We detail how practical issues related to sampling
and model misspecification may be addressed using semi-parametric techniques
for time series, and we demonstrate the effectiveness of our stochastic models
through application to both real-world data and to numerical model output.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figure
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