A method for determining groups in nonparametric regression curves: application to prefrontal cortex neural activity analysis

Generalized additive models provide a flexible and easily-interpretable method for uncovering a nonlinear relationship between response and covariates. In many situations, the effect of a continuous covariate on the response varies across groups defined by the levels of a categorical variable. When confronted with a considerable number of groups defined by the levels of the categorical variable and a factor‐by‐curve interaction is detected in the model, it then becomes important to compare these regression curves. When the null hypothesis of equality of curves is rejected, leading to the clear conclusion that at least one curve is different, we may assume that individuals can be grouped into a number of classes whose members all share the same regression function. We propose a method that allows determining such groups with an automatic selection of their number by means of bootstrapping. The validity and behavior of the proposed method were evaluated through simulation studies. The applicability of the proposed method is illustrated using real data from an experimental study in neurology.This work was partially supported by project 2017/00001/006/001/097: Ayudas para el man tenimiento de actividades de investigaci ´on de institutos universitarios de investigaci ´on y grupos de investigaci´on de la Universidad de Oviedo para el ejercicio 2021. Luís Meira-Machado acknowledges financial support from Portuguese Funds through FCT - ”Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia”, within the projects UIDB ˆ /00013/2020, UIDP/00013/2020. Javier Roca-Pardinas acknowledges financial support from Grant PID2020-118101GB-I00, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033)

Functional Location-Scale Model to Forecast Bivariate Pollution Episodes

Predicting anomalous emission of pollutants into the atmosphere well in advance is crucial for industries emitting such elements, since it allows them to take corrective measures aimed to avoid such emissions and their consequences. In this work, we propose a functional location-scale model to predict in advance pollution episodes where two pollutants are involved. Functional generalized additive models (FGAMs) are used to estimate the means and variances of the model, as well as the correlation between both pollutants. The method not only forecasts the concentrations of both pollutants, it also estimates an uncertainty region where the concentrations of both pollutants should be located, given a specific level of uncertainty. The performance of the model was evaluated using real data of SO 2 and NO x emissions from a coal-fired power station, obtaining good resultsThe authors acknowledge financial support from: (1) UO-Proyecto Uni-Ovi (PAPI-18-GR-2014-0014), (2) Project MTM2016-76969-P from Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad—Agencia Estatal de Investigación and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and IAP network StUDyS from Belgian Science Policy, (3) Nuevos avances metodológicos y computacionales en estadística no-paramétrica y semiparamétrica—Ministerio de Ciencia e Investigación (MTM2017-89422-P)S

Large scale semi-automatic detection of forest roads from low density LiDAR data on steep terrain in Northern Spain

[EN] While forest roads are important to forest managers in terms of facilitating the exploitation of wood and timber, their role is far more multifunctional. They permit access to emergency services in the case of forest fires as well as acting as fire breaks, enhance biodiversity, and provide access to the public to enjoy recreational activities. Detailed maps of forest roads are an essential tool for better and more timely forest management and automatic/semi-auto-matic tools allow not only the creation of forest road databases, but also enable these to be updated. In Spain, LiDAR data for the entire national territory is freely available, and the capture of higher density data is planned in the next few years. As such, the development of a forest road detection methodology based on LiDAR data would allow maps of all forest roads to be developed and regularly updated. The general objective of this work was to establish a low density LiDAR data-based methodology for the semi-automatic detection of the centerline of forest roads on steep terrain with various types of canopy cover. Intensity and slope images were generated using the currently available LiDAR data of the study area (0.5 points m-2). Two image classification approaches were evaluated: pixel-based and object-oriented classification (OBIA). The LiDAR-derived centerlines obtained with the two approaches were compared with the real centerlines which had previously been digitized in the field. The road width, type of surface and type of vegetation cover were also recorded. The effectiveness of the two approaches was evaluated through three quality indicators: correctness, completeness and quality. In addition, the accuracy of the LiDAR-derived centerlines was also evaluated by combining GIS analysis and statistical methods. The pixel-based approach obtained higher values than OBIA for two of the three quality measures (correctness: 93% compared to 90%; and quality: 60% compared to 56%) as well as in terms of positional accuracy (± 5.5 m vs. ± 6.8 for OBIA). The results obtained in this study demonstrate that producing road maps is among the most valuable and easily attainable products of LiDAR data analysis.SIThis study was funded by the SCALyFOR project (R&D Projects “Research Challenges”, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivenes

A distance correlation approach for optimum multiscale selection in 3D point cloud classification

[Abstract] Supervised classification of 3D point clouds using machine learning algorithms and handcrafted local features as covariates frequently depends on the size of the neighborhood (scale) around each point used to determine those features. It is therefore crucial to estimate the scale or scales providing the best classification results. In this work, we propose three methods to estimate said scales, all of them based on calculating the maximum values of the distance correlation (DC) functions between the features and the label assigned to each point. The performance of the methods was tested using simulated data, and the method presenting the best results was applied to a benchmark data set for point cloud classification. This method consists of detecting the local maximums of DC functions previously smoothed to avoid choosing scales that are very close to each other. Five different classifiers were used: linear discriminant analysis, support vector machines, random forest, multinomial logistic regression and multilayer perceptron neural network. The results obtained were compared with those from other strategies available in the literature, being favorable to our approach.Xunta de Galicia; ED431G 2019/01Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades; MTM2016-76969-PXunta de Galicia; ED431C-2020-14MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE; MTM2017-89422-

Detection of human vital signs in hazardous environments by means of video magnification

In cases of natural disasters, epidemics or even in dangerous situations like an act of terrorism, battle fields, a shooting or a mountain accident, finding survivors is a challenge. In these kind of situations it is sometimes critical to know if a person has vital signs or not, without the need to be in contact with the victim, thus avoiding jeopardizing the lives of the rescue workers. In this work, we propose the use of video magnification techniques to detect small movements in human bodies due to breathing that are invisible to the naked eye. Two different video magnification techniques, intensity-based and phase-based, were tested. The utility of these techniques to detect people who are alive but injured in risk situations was verified by simulating a scene with three people involved in an accident. Several factors such as camera stability, distance to the object, light conditions, magnification factor or computing time were analyzed. The results obtained were quite positive for both techniques, intensity-based method proving more adequate if the interest is in almost instant results whereas the phase-based method is more appropriate if processing time is not so relevant but the degree of magnification without excessive image noise

Morphological Operations to Extract Urban Curbs in 3D MLS Point Clouds

Automatic curb detection is an important issue in road maintenance, three-dimensional (3D) urban modeling, and autonomous navigation fields. This paper is focused on the segmentation of curbs and street boundaries using a 3D point cloud captured by a mobile laser scanner (MLS) system. Our method provides a solution based on the projection of the measured point cloud on the XY plane. Over that plane, a segmentation algorithm is carried out based on morphological operations to determine the location of street boundaries. In addition, a solution to extract curb edges based on the roughness of the point cloud is proposed. The proposed method is valid in both straight and curved road sections and applicable both to laser scanner and stereo vision 3D data due to the independence of its scanning geometry. The proposed method has been successfully tested with two datasets measured by different sensors. The first dataset corresponds to a point cloud measured by a TOPCON sensor in the Spanish town of Cudillero. The second dataset corresponds to a point cloud measured by a RIEGL sensor in the Austrian town of Horn. The extraction method provides completeness and correctness rates above 90% and quality values higher than 85% in both studied datasets.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovació

Comparing Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) and Wearable Laser Scanning (WLS) for Individual Tree Modeling at Plot Level

54 p.This study presents a comparison between the use of wearable laser scanning (WLS) and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) devices for automatic tree detection with an estimation of two dendrometric variables: diameter at breast height (DBH) and total tree height (TH). Operative processes for data collection and automatic forest inventory are described in detail. The approach used is based on the clustering of points belonging to each individual tree, the isolation of the trunks, the iterative fitting of circles for the DBH calculation and the computation of the TH of each tree. TLS and WLS point clouds were compared by the statistical analysis of both estimated forest dendrometric parameters and the possible presence of bias. Results show that the apparent differences in point density and relative precision between both 3D forest models do not affect tree detection and DBH estimation. Nevertheless, tree height estimation using WLS appears to be affected by the limited scanning range of the WLS used in this study. TH estimations for trees below a certain height are equivalent using WLS or TLS, whereas TH of taller trees is clearly underestimated using WLSS

Hybrid ABC optimized MARS-based modeling of the milling tool wear from milling run experimental data

Milling cutters are important cutting tools used in milling machines to perform milling operations, which are prone to wear and subsequent failure. In this paper, a practical new hybrid model to predict the milling tool wear in a regular cut, as well as entry cut and exit cut, of a milling tool is proposed. The model was based on the optimization tool termed artificial bee colony (ABC) in combination with multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) technique. This optimization mechanism involved the parameter setting in the MARS training procedure, which significantly influences the regression accuracy. Therefore, an ABC–MARS-based model was successfully used here to predict the milling tool flank wear (output variable) as a function of the following input variables: the time duration of experiment, depth of cut, feed, type of material, etc. Regression with optimal hyperparameters was performed and a determination coefficient of 0.94 was obtained. The ABC–MARS-based model's goodness of fit to experimental data confirmed the good performance of this model. This new model also allowed us to ascertain the most influential parameters on the milling tool flank wear with a view to proposing milling machine's improvements. Finally, conclusions of this study are exposed

Determining optimum wavelengths for leaf water content estimation from re ectance: a distance correlation approach

P. 1-10This paper proposes a method to estimate leaf water content from reflectance in four commercial vineyard varieties by estimating the local maxima of a distance correlation function. First, it applies four different functional regression models to the data and compares the models to test the viability of estimating water content from reflectance. It then applies our methodology to select a small number of wavelengths (optimum wavelengths) from the continuous spectrum, which simplifies the regression problem. Finally, it compares the results to those obtained by means of two different methods: a nonparametric kernel smoothing for variable selection in functional data and a wavelet-based weighted LASSO functional linear regression. Our approach proved to have some advantages over these two testing approaches, mainly in terms of the computing time and the lack of assumption of an underlying model. Finally the paper concludes that estimating water content from a few wavelengths is almost equivalent to doing so using larger wavelength intervalsS

Evaluating Lightning-Caused Fire Occurrence Using Spatial Generalized Additive Models: A Case Study in Central Spain

[EN] It is widely accepted that the relationship between lightning wildfire occurrence and its influencing factors vary depending on the spatial scale of analysis, making the development of models at the regional scale advisable. In this study, we analyze the effects of different biophysical variables and lightning characteristics on lightning-caused forest wildfires in Castilla y Le´on region (Central Spain). The presence/absence of at least one lightningcaused fire in any 4 × 4-km grid cell was used as a dependent variable and vegetation type and structure, terrain, climate, and lightning characteristics were used as possible covariates. Five prediction methods were compared: a generalized linear model (GLM), a random forest model (RFM), a generalized additive model (GAM), a GAM that includes a spatial trend function (GAMs) and a spatial autoregressive model (AUREG). A GAMs with just one covariate, apart from longitude and latitude for each observation included as a combined effect, was considered the most appropriate model in terms of both predictive ability and simplicity. According to our results, the probability of a forest being affected by a lightning-caused fire is positively and nonlinearly associated with the percentage of coniferous woodlands in the landscape, suggesting that occurrence is more closely associated with vegetation type than with topography, climate, or lightning characteristics. The selected GAMs is intended to inform the Regional Government of Castilla y Le´on (the fire and fuel agency in the region) regarding identification of areas at greatest risk so it can design long-term forest fuel and fire management strategiesSIFunding for this research was provided by the Universidad de León under the project titled “Análisis de la distribución espacial y temporal y caracterización de fenómenos tormentosos en el medio agrícola y forestal de la Meseta Central y del Norte de España.” AEMET provided the lightning strike and meteorological data use