In this chapter we review some examples, methods, and recent results
involving comparison of clustering properties of point processes. Our approach
is founded on some basic observations allowing us to consider void
probabilities and moment measures as two complementary tools for capturing
clustering phenomena in point processes. As might be expected, smaller values
of these characteristics indicate less clustering. Also, various global and
local functionals of random geometric models driven by point processes admit
more or less explicit bounds involving void probabilities and moment measures,
thus aiding the study of impact of clustering of the underlying point process.
When stronger tools are needed, directional convex ordering of point processes
happens to be an appropriate choice, as well as the notion of (positive or
negative) association, when comparison to the Poisson point process is
considered. We explain the relations between these tools and provide examples
of point processes admitting them. Furthermore, we sketch some recent results
obtained using the aforementioned comparison tools, regarding percolation and
coverage properties of the Boolean model, the SINR model, subgraph counts in
random geometric graphs, and more generally, U-statistics of point processes.
We also mention some results on Betti numbers for \v{C}ech and Vietoris-Rips
random complexes generated by stationary point processes. A general observation
is that many of the results derived previously for the Poisson point process
generalise to some "sub-Poisson" processes, defined as those clustering less
than the Poisson process in the sense of void probabilities and moment
measures, negative association or dcx-ordering.Comment: 44 pages, 4 figure