421 research outputs found
Point process-based modeling of multiple debris flow landslides using INLA: an application to the 2009 Messina disaster
We develop a stochastic modeling approach based on spatial point processes of
log-Gaussian Cox type for a collection of around 5000 landslide events provoked
by a precipitation trigger in Sicily, Italy. Through the embedding into a
hierarchical Bayesian estimation framework, we can use the Integrated Nested
Laplace Approximation methodology to make inference and obtain the posterior
estimates. Several mapping units are useful to partition a given study area in
landslide prediction studies. These units hierarchically subdivide the
geographic space from the highest grid-based resolution to the stronger
morphodynamic-oriented slope units. Here we integrate both mapping units into a
single hierarchical model, by treating the landslide triggering locations as a
random point pattern. This approach diverges fundamentally from the unanimously
used presence-absence structure for areal units since we focus on modeling the
expected landslide count jointly within the two mapping units. Predicting this
landslide intensity provides more detailed and complete information as compared
to the classically used susceptibility mapping approach based on relative
probabilities. To illustrate the model's versatility, we compute absolute
probability maps of landslide occurrences and check its predictive power over
space. While the landslide community typically produces spatial predictive
models for landslides only in the sense that covariates are spatially
distributed, no actual spatial dependence has been explicitly integrated so far
for landslide susceptibility. Our novel approach features a spatial latent
effect defined at the slope unit level, allowing us to assess the spatial
influence that remains unexplained by the covariates in the model
A Variational Autoencoder for Heterogeneous Temporal and Longitudinal Data
The variational autoencoder (VAE) is a popular deep latent variable model
used to analyse high-dimensional datasets by learning a low-dimensional latent
representation of the data. It simultaneously learns a generative model and an
inference network to perform approximate posterior inference. Recently proposed
extensions to VAEs that can handle temporal and longitudinal data have
applications in healthcare, behavioural modelling, and predictive maintenance.
However, these extensions do not account for heterogeneous data (i.e., data
comprising of continuous and discrete attributes), which is common in many
real-life applications. In this work, we propose the heterogeneous longitudinal
VAE (HL-VAE) that extends the existing temporal and longitudinal VAEs to
heterogeneous data. HL-VAE provides efficient inference for high-dimensional
datasets and includes likelihood models for continuous, count, categorical, and
ordinal data while accounting for missing observations. We demonstrate our
model's efficacy through simulated as well as clinical datasets, and show that
our proposed model achieves competitive performance in missing value imputation
and predictive accuracy.Comment: Preprin
Bayesian nonparametric models for spatially indexed data of mixed type
We develop Bayesian nonparametric models for spatially indexed data of mixed
type. Our work is motivated by challenges that occur in environmental
epidemiology, where the usual presence of several confounding variables that
exhibit complex interactions and high correlations makes it difficult to
estimate and understand the effects of risk factors on health outcomes of
interest. The modeling approach we adopt assumes that responses and confounding
variables are manifestations of continuous latent variables, and uses
multivariate Gaussians to jointly model these. Responses and confounding
variables are not treated equally as relevant parameters of the distributions
of the responses only are modeled in terms of explanatory variables or risk
factors. Spatial dependence is introduced by allowing the weights of the
nonparametric process priors to be location specific, obtained as probit
transformations of Gaussian Markov random fields. Confounding variables and
spatial configuration have a similar role in the model, in that they only
influence, along with the responses, the allocation probabilities of the areas
into the mixture components, thereby allowing for flexible adjustment of the
effects of observed confounders, while allowing for the possibility of residual
spatial structure, possibly occurring due to unmeasured or undiscovered
spatially varying factors. Aspects of the model are illustrated in simulation
studies and an application to a real data set
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