0000000000164505
AUTHOR
Francisco Montes
Spatio-temporal cluster detection of chickenpox in Valencia, Spain in the period 2008-2012.
Chickenpox is a highly contagious airborne disease caused by <em>Varicella zoster</em>, which affects nearly all non-immune children worldwide with an annual incidence estimated at 80-90 million cases. To analyze the spatiotemporal pattern of the chickenpox incidence in the city of Valencia, Spain two complementary statistical approaches were used. First, we evaluated the existence of clusters and spatio-temporal interaction; secondly, we used this information to find the locations of the spatio-temporal clusters via the space-time permutation model. The first method used detects any aggregation in our data but does not provide the spatial and temporal information. The second me…
Estimating the occurrence of traffic accidents near school locations: A case study from Valencia (Spain) including several approaches
Traffic safety around school locations is a topic of particular interest given the large number of vulnerable users, such as pedestrians or cyclists, that commute to them at certain times of the day. A dataset of traffic accidents recorded in Valencia (Spain) during 2014 and 2015 is analyzed in order to estimate the effects that school locations produce on traffic risk within their surroundings. The four typologies of school in this city according to the academic levels they offer (All-level, Preschool, Primary, Secondary) are distinguished and taken into consideration for the analysis. Two time windows comprising the starting time in the morning and the evening time once day school has end…
Sparse Sampling and Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Boolean Models
A condition for practical independence of contact distribution functions in Boolean models is obtained. This result allows the authors to use maximum likelihcod methods, via sparse sampling, for estimating unknown parameters of an isotropic Boolean model. The second part of this paper is devoted to a simulation study of the proposed method. AMS classification: 60D05
The 1970 US Draft Lottery Revisited: A Spatial Analysis
Summary We revise the result of the 1970 selective service draft lottery in the USA following an open question that was suggested by Fienberg in a paper published in Science in 1971. The result of the drawings can be viewed as a particular spatial pattern which can be analysed by using general spatial tools adapted to our context. Approaches for assessing the complete spatial randomness for this spatial process on a finite support are proposed. More specifically, these approaches involve the number of events in a square window and a k(r)-based function used to analyse stationary spatial point processes.
A study on the degree of relationship between two individuals.
The paper studies the likely degree of relationship between two individuals who could possibly be half sibs. The possible common ancestor was dead, which further complicated the problem. The model used was devised by Thompson [in Rao and Chakraborty (eds): Handbook of Statistics, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1991] and establishes a correspondence between the possible degree of relationship and certain feasible probability distributions on the number of identical by descent genes. Two statistical approaches are considered: the classical one, in which the maximum likelihood estimation for the parameters of Thompson’s model are obtained, and the Bayesian one, in which the test of the hypothesis o…
Accounting for previous events to model and predict traffic accidents at the road segment level: A study in Valencia (Spain)
Abstract Predicting the occurrence of traffic accidents is essential for establishing preventive measures and reducing the impact of traffic accidents. In particular, it is fundamental to make predictions using fine spatio-temporal units. In this paper, the daily risk of traffic accident occurrence across the road network of Valencia (Spain) is modeled through logistic regression models. The spatio-temporal dependence between the observations is accounted for through the inclusion of lagged binary covariates representing the previous occurrence of a traffic accident within a spatio-temporal window centered at each combination of day and segment of the network. A temporal distance of 28 days…
Working with (too) Few Samples
This paper is concerned with gene set differential expression analysis. We compare the transcriptomic behaviour of each gene set between different experimental conditions.The gene set is previously defined. It has been used a gene set collection downloaded from Gene Ontology.A randomization test is proposed and compared with other previous procedures using a RNA-seq experiment of colorectal cancer (CRC).
A multi-scale area-interaction model for spatio-temporal point patterns
Models for fitting spatio-temporal point processes should incorporate spatio-temporal inhomogeneity and allow for different types of interaction between points (clustering or regularity). This paper proposes an extension of the spatial multi-scale area-interaction model to a spatio-temporal framework. This model allows for interaction between points at different spatio-temporal scales and the inclusion of covariates. We fit the proposed model to varicella cases registered during 2013 in Valencia, Spain. The fitted model indicates small scale clustering and regularity for higher spatio-temporal scales.
The spatial pattern of a forest ecosystem
Abstract Statistical analysis of stands of trees as a whole need suitable methods of spatial statistics. Obviously, trees within a stand affect development and survival of their neighbours. They interact and therefore have to be considered as a system of dependent random variates from an unknown stochastic process. One such statistical model which considers the spatial dependence among trees in a forest and their characteristics is a marked point process. The `points', called events in spatial statistics, are the tree positions and the `marks' are tree characteristics such as crown lengths or tree species. A minimal prerequisite for any serious attempt to model an observed pattern is to tes…
Equilibrio competitivo en Liga española de futbol de Primera División: Un test de Montecarlo basado en datos funcionales
The supremacy of a few teams over the other participants is a common factor in the major European football leagues. The Spanish First Division league is not an exception. In order to demonstrate this fact, functional data analysis is used to analyze football league classifications for last ten seasons, 2002-03 to 2011-12. Not only the use of these techniques distinguish this work from similar, another distinctive feature is the use of a non-uniform probability distribution on the three possible outcomes of a match, obtained from the results of the 3800 matches of the 10 seasons taking into account the difference between the categories of the teams in the match. A Monte Carlo test allows to …
Model comparison and selection for stationary space–time models
An intensive simulation study to compare the spatio-temporal prediction performances among various space-time models is presented. The models having separable spatio-temporal covariance functions and nonseparable ones, under various scenarios, are also considered. The computational performance among the various selected models are compared. The issue of how to select an appropriate space-time model by accounting for the tradeoff between goodness-of-fit and model complexity is addressed. Performances of the two commonly used model-selection criteria, Akaike information criterion and Bayesian information criterion are examined. Furthermore, a practical application based on the statistical ana…
Modeling accident risk at the road level through zero-inflated negative binomial models: A case study of multiple road networks
Abstract This paper presents a case study carried out in multiple cities of the Valencian Community (Spain) to determine the effect of sociodemographic and road characteristics on traffic accident risk. The analyzes are performed at the road segment level, considering the linear network representing the road structure of each city as a spatial lattice. The number of accidents observed in each road segment from 2010 to 2019 is taken as the response variable, and a zero-inflated modeling approach is considered. Count overdispersion and spatial dependence are also accounted for. Despite the complexity and sparsity of the data, the fitted models performed considerably well, with few exceptions.…
Identifying crime generators and spatially overlapping high-risk areas through a nonlinear model: A comparison between three cities of the Valencian region (Spain)
The behavior and spatial distribution of crime events can be explained through the characterization of an area in terms of its demography, socioeconomy, and built environment. In particular, recent studies on the incidence of crime in a city have focused on the identification of features of the built environment (specific places or facilities) that may increase crime risk within a certain radius. However, it is hard to identify environmental characteristics that consistently explain crime occurrence across cities and crime types. This article focuses on the assessment of the effect that certain types of places have on the incidence of property crime, robbery, and vandalism in three cities o…
Noise Disturbances and Calls for Police Service in València (Spain): A Logistic Model with Spatial and Temporal Effects
The purpose of this paper is to explore the presence of spatial and temporal effects on the calls for noise disturbance service reported to the Local Police of Valè
Investigation of the consequences of the modifiable areal unit problem in macroscopic traffic safety analysis: A case study accounting for scale and zoning.
Abstract Traffic safety analysis at the macroscopic level usually relies on previously defined areal traffic analysis zones (TAZs) that are used as the units of investigation. Hence, statistical inference is made on the basis of such units, implying that the consideration of a certain TAZ configuration may influence the results and conclusions achieved. Regarding this, the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) is a well-known issue in the field of spatial statistics, which refers to the effects that arise in statistical properties and estimations when there is a change in areal units of analysis. In this paper, the consequences of MAUP have been investigated through a dataset of traffic cras…
Detecting spatio-temporal mortality clusters of European countries by sex and age.
[EN] Background: Mortality decreased in European Union (EU) countries during the last century. Despite these similar trends, there are still considerable differences in the levels of mortality between Eastern and Western European countries. Sub-group analysis of mortality in Europe for different age and sex groups is common, however to our knowledge a spatio-temporal methodology as in this study has not been applied to detect significant spatial dependence and interaction with time. Thus, the objective of this paper is to quantify the dynamics of mortality in Europe and detect significant clusters of mortality between European countries, applying spatio-temporal methodology. In addition, th…
Spatio-temporal stochastic modelling: environmental and health processes
Guest editorial
Low intensity magnetic field influences short-term memory: A study in a group of healthy students
This study analyzes if an external magnetic stimulus (2 kHz and approximately 0.1 μT applied near frontal cortex) influences working memory, perception, binary decision, motor execution, and sustained attention in humans. A magnetic stimulus and a sham stimulus were applied to both sides of the head (frontal cortex close to temporal-parietal area) in young and healthy male test subjects (n = 65) while performing Sternberg's memory scanning task. There was a significant change in reaction time. Times recorded for perception, sustained attention, and motor execution were lower in exposed subjects (P < 0.01). However, time employed in binary decision increased for subjects exposed to magnetic …
DRHotNet: An R package for detecting differential risk hotspots on a linear network
One of the most common applications of spatial data analysis is detecting zones, at a certain investigation level, where a point-referenced event under study is especially concentrated. The detection of this kind of zones, which are usually referred to as hotspots, is essential in certain fields such as criminology, epidemiology or traffic safety. Traditionally, hotspot detection procedures have been developed over areal units of analysis. Although working at this spatial scale can be suitable enough for many research or practical purposes, detecting hotspots at a more accurate level (for instance, at the road segment level) may be more convenient sometimes. Furthermore, it is typical that …
Detection of spatial disease clusters with LISA functions.
Detection of disease clusters is an important tool in epidemiology that can help to identify risk factors associated with the disease and in understanding its etiology. In this article we propose a method for the detection of spatial clusters where the locations of a set of cases and a set of controls are available. The method is based on local indicators of spatial association functions (LISA functions), particularly on the development of a local version of the product density, which is a second-order characteristic of spatial point processes. The behavior of the method is evaluated and compared with Kulldorff's spatial scan statistic by means of a simulation study. It is shown that the LI…
Supplementary_file_Metropolis_Hastings – Supplemental material for Adjusting the Knox test by accounting for spatio-temporal crime risk heterogeneity to analyse near-repeats
Supplemental material, Supplementary_file_Metropolis_Hastings for Adjusting the Knox test by accounting for spatio-temporal crime risk heterogeneity to analyse near-repeats by Álvaro Briz-Redón, Francisco Martínez-Ruiz and Francisco Montes in European Journal of Criminology
Second‐order analysis of marked inhomogeneous spatiotemporal point processes: Applications to earthquake data
To analyse interactions in marked spatio-temporal point processes (MSTPPs), we introduce marked second-order reduced moment measures and K-functions for inhomogeneous second-order intensity reweigh ...
Adjusting the Knox test by accounting for spatio-temporal crime risk heterogeneity to analyse near-repeats
The near-repeat phenomenon usually occurs with any crime. Hence, to implement preventive measures, it is of great interest to figure out at which spatio-temporal scale crimes are more likely to be repeated by offenders. The Knox test is the most used statistical tool for evaluating the presence of the near-repeat phenomenon given a dataset of crimes that are located in space and time. The classic version of this test assumes that crime risk is homogeneous in both space and time, although this assumption rarely holds in reality. Therefore, the main goal of this article is to highlight the necessity of adjusting the standard version of the Knox test, including spatial and temporal effects th…
Spatial analysis of traffic accidents near and between road intersections in a directed linear network.
Although most of the literature on traffic safety analysis has been developed over areal zones, there is a growing interest in using the specific road structure of the region under investigation, which is known as a linear network in the field of spatial statistics. The use of linear networks entails several technical complications, ranging from the accurate location of traffic accidents to the definition of covariates at a spatial micro-level. Therefore, the primary goal of this study was to display a detailed analysis of a dataset of traffic accidents recorded in Valencia (Spain), which were located into a linear network representing more than 30 km of urban road structure corresponding t…
A comparative analysis of different spatial sampling schemes: Modelling of SSRB data
Low spatial resolution satellite sensors provide information over relatively large targets with typical pixel resolutions of hundreds of km2. However, the spatial scales of ground measurements are usually much smaller. Such differences in spatial scales makes the interpretation of comparisons between quantities derived from low resolution sensors and ground measurements particularly difficult. It also highlights the importance of developing appropriate sampling strategies when designing ground campaigns for validation studies of low resolution sensors. We make use of statistical modelling of high resolution surface shortwave radiation budget (SSRB) data to look into this problem. A spatial …
Pegylated alpha-interferon-2a plus ribavirin compared with pegylated alpha-interferon-2b plus ribavirin for initial treatment of chronic hepatitis C virus: prospective, non-randomized study.
Background and aim We assessed whether the two regimens of pegylated alpha-interferon-2b (PEG-IFN-alpha2b) plus ribavirin and pegylated alpha-interferon-2a (PEG-IFN-alpha2a) plus ribavirin showed differences in terms of sustained virological response, withdrawal due to side-effects and dose adjustment requirements in the treatment of naive chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) patients. Methods A prospective non-randomized, open-label comparison was made of naive HCV-infected patients undergoing standard 24- or 48-week treatment with two PEG-IFN combined with weight-based dosing regimen of ribavirin (PEG-IFN-alpha2a/ribavirin, n = 91; PEG-IFN-alpha2b/ribavirin, n = 92). Results Sustained virologi…
The second-order analysis of marked spatio-temporal point processes, with an application to earthquake data
To analyse interaction in marked spatio-temporal point processes (MSTPPs), we introduce marked (cross) second-order reduced moment measures and K-functions for general inhomogeneous second-order intensity reweighted stationary MSTPPs. These summary statistics, which allow us to quantify dependence between different mark categories of the points, are depending on the specific mark space and mark reference measure chosen. We also look closer at how the summary statistics reduce under assumptions such as the MSTPP being multivariate and/or stationary. A new test for independent marking is devised and unbiased minus-sampling estimators are derived for all statistics considered. In addition, we …
The lack of balance in the Spanish First Division football league
Research question: The importance of balance in sports competitions has been made evident on many occasions. The dominance of a few teams over the rest of the participants in the Spanish First Division Football League has made the subject of a lack of balance an omnipresent one in sports journalism. The aim of this article is to show that the lack of balance is not just a matter of the past few seasons, but also it has been evidenced since far back in time. To test this hypothesis, the results of the league have been analyzed since its inception through various static and dynamic indices of competitive balance.Research methods: The empirical distribution of static and dynamic indices under …
Reestimating a minimum acceptable geocoding hit rate for conducting a spatial analysis
Geocoding consists in converting a textual description of a location into coordinates. Hence, geocoding a dataset of events has to be carried out before performing a spatial analysis of some data. ...
Do different models induce changes in mortality indicators? That is a key question for extending the Lee-Carter model
[EN] The parametric model introduced by Lee and Carter in 1992 for modeling mortality rates in the USA was a seminal development in forecasting life expectancies and has been widely used since then. Different extensions of this model, using different hypotheses about the data, constraints on the parameters, and appropriate methods have led to improvements in the model's fit to historical data and the model's forecasting of the future. This paper's main objective is to evaluate if differences between models are reflected in different mortality indicators' forecasts. To this end, nine sets of indicator predictions were generated by crossing three models and three block-bootstrap samples with …
Temporal evolution of some mortality indicators: Application to Spanish data
[EN] In Spain, as in other developed countries, significant changes in mortality patterns have occurred during the 20th and 21st centuries. One reflection of these changes is life expectancy, which has improved in this period, although the robustness of this indicator prevents these changes from being of the same order as those for the probability of death. If, moreover, we bear in mind that life expectancy offers no information as to whether this improvement is the same for different age groups, it is important and necessary to turn to other mortality indicators whose past and future evolution in Spain we are going to study. These indicators are applied to Spanish mortality data for the pe…
Spatio-temporal statistical methods in environmental and biometrical problems
This is the editorial letter for the Special Issue dedicated to the VIII International Workshop on Spatio-temporal Modelling (METMAVIII) which took place in Valencia (Spain) from 1 to 3 June 2016, and to the second Galician-Portuguese meeting of Biometry, with applications to Health Sciences, Ecology and Environmental Sciences (BIOAPP2016) held in Santiago de Compostela (Spain), 30–2 July 2016. This special issue summarises and discusses selected peer-reviewed contributions related to spatial and spatio-temporal statistical methodologies comprising both new methodological approaches and a wide range of applications related to environmental and biometrical problems. Point processes, lattice …
Likelihood Inference for Gibbs Processes in the Analysis of Spatial Point Patterns
Plusieurs auteurs ont propose des approximations stochastiques et non-stochastiques au MLE pour les processus de Gibbs utilises pour decrire les interactions entre deux points dans une distribution spatiale de points. Cettes approximations sont necessaires a cause de la difficulte en l'evaluation de la constante qui normalise la f.d.p., Cet article present une comparaison, parmi d'un model de Strauss, des methodes qui utilisent des approximations directes aux MLE et des methodes qui utilisent techniques de Monte Carlo de chaine de Markov. Les techniques de simulation utilisees sont le Gibbs sampler et l'algorithm de Metropolis-Hastings.
Aggression towards Referees in Amateur Football in Spain: A Loglinear Approach
Aggressive behavior towards football referees is becoming increasingly common, and as a result we are getting used to it and coming to see it as an inevitable and intrinsic element of football matches. Spectators, players and coaches are all prone to take this view. This article studies how the types of aggression shown by these three groups towards the referee are related to one another, and how they are perceived by the referee, in amateur football. For this purpose, the phenomenon was assessed, using an ad-hoc form, both by an expert and by the referee, in 119 regional and youth football matches in the city of Valencia and surrounding municipalities. We analysed the data using a loglinea…
Crime Analysis of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile: A Spatial Panel Data Approach
The aim of our work is to determine the influence that socio-economic and demographic factors have had on crimes that have taken place during the period 2010–2018 in the communes of the Metropolitan Region of Chile, as well as the existence of possible spatial or temporal effects. We address 12 kinds of crime that we have grouped into two main types: against people and against property. Our interest focuses on crimes against people, using crimes against property as an additional covariate in order to investigate the existence of the broken-windows phenomenon in this context. The model chosen for our analysis is a spatial panel model with fixed effects. The results highlight that covariates …
Modelling residuals dependence in dynamic life tables: A geostatistical approach
The problem of modelling dynamic mortality tables is considered. In this context, the influence of age on data graduation needs to be properly assessed through a dynamic model, as mortality progresses over the years. After detrending the raw data, the residuals dependence structure is analysed, by considering them as a realisation of a homogeneous Gaussian random field defined on R × R. This setting allows for the implementation of geostatistical techniques for the estimation of the dependence and further interpolation in the domain of interest. In particular, a complex form of interaction between age and time is considered, by taking into account a zonally anisotropic component embedded in…
A comparison of nonparametric methods in the graduation of mortality: Application to data from the Valencia Region (Spain)
[EN] The nonparametric graduation of mortality data aims to estimate death rates by carrying out a smoothing of the crude rates obtained directly from original data. The main difference with regard to parametric models is that the assumption of an age-dependent function is unnecessary, which is advantageous when the information behind the model is unknown, as one cause of error is often the choice of an inappropriate model. This paper reviews the various alternatives and presents their application to mortality data from the Valencia Region, Spain. The comparison leads us to the conclusion that the best model is a smoothing by means of Generalised Additive Models (GAM) with splines. The most…
Geographic conditioning in dietary, social, and health patterns in elderly population with disabilities
Abstract Objective The aim of this study was to identify the most relevant variables defining the dietary, social, and health patterns of elderly populations with disabilities, considering their geographic profile. Methods A cross-sectional study was carried out in a sample of 354 disabled, free-living elderly adults from three different geographic profiles (metropolitan, rural, and mixed profile). The dietary data were obtained through a validated food habit questionnaire. The data regarding health status, cohabitation unit, and social benefits were obtained through the public social services. A standardized principal component analysis was used to select the most relevant variables, by co…
Space-time airborne disease mapping applied to detect specific behaviour of varicella in Valencia, Spain.
Airborne diseases are one of humanity's most feared sicknesses and have regularly caused concern among specialists. Varicella is an airborne disease which usually affects children before the age of 10. Because of its nature, varicella gives rise to interesting spatial, temporal and spatio-temporal patterns. This paper studies spatio-temporal exploratory analysis tools to detect specific behaviour of varicella in the city of Valencia, Spain, from 2008 to 2013. These methods have shown a significant association between the spatial and the temporal component, confirmed by the space-time models applied to the data. High relative risk of varicella is observed in economically disadvantaged region…
Who sent the e-mail?
In mid October 2001, a number of lecturers at the University of Valencia received insulting, threatening and anonymous electronic mails. An investigation about this fact is only permitted under very restricted conditions, stipulated by the Spanish law of the Secrecy of Communications. Only one judicial authority is able to lift these restrictions and authorize information to be checked in order to obtain enough evidence to unveil who was responsible for the messages. The authors propose in this paper a study for quantifying the weight of certain evidence with a view to show to the judge that the relevance of the said weight would justify such a measure.
Boolean Models: Maximum Likelihood Estimation from Circular Clumps
This paper deals with the problem of making inferences on the maximum radius and the intensity of the Poisson point process associated to a Boolean Model of circular primary grains with uniformly distributed random radii. The only sample information used is observed radii of circular clumps (DUPAC, 1980). The behaviour of maximum likelihood estimation has been evaluated by means of Monte Carlo methods.
Identification of differential risk hotspots for collision and vehicle type in a directed linear network
Traffic accidents can take place in very different ways and involve a substantially distinct number and types of vehicles. Thus, it is of interest to know which parts of a road structure present an overrepresentation of a specific type of traffic accident, specially for some typologies of collisions and vehicles that tend to trigger more severe consequences for the users being involved. In this study, a spatial approach is followed to estimate the risk that different types of collisions and vehicles present in the central area of Valencia (Spain), considering the accidents observed in this city during the period 2014-2017. A directed spatial linear network representing the non-pedestrian ro…
A geostatistical approach for dynamic life tables: The effect of mortality on remaining lifetime and annuities
Dynamic life tables arise as an alternative to the standard (static) life table, with the aim of incorporating the evolution of mortality over time. The parametric model introduced by Lee and Carter in 1992 for projected mortality rates in the US is one of the most outstanding and has been used a great deal since then. Different versions of the model have been developed but all of them, together with other parametric models, consider the observed mortality rates as independent observations. This is a difficult hypothesis to justify when looking at the graph of the residuals obtained with any of these methods. Methods of adjustment and prediction based on geostatistical techniques which expl…
The experimental failure of macroscopic determinism: the case of an electrocardiogram
Even if never elucidated, the question of determinism is a standing question along the history of human thinking. A physical system evolves in a deterministic way if its future is completely determined once we have fixed some present characteristics of it, i.e., its initial conditions. The problem addressed in the present paper is to test determinism in the macroscopic domain. By imposing a very plausible ``separability'' assumption, we prove that determinism enters in contradiction with the recorded outcomes of a given electrocardiogram. The interest of this result comes from the fact such a basic idea as determinism has never been experimentally tested up to now in the macroscopic domain,…
Modelling and forecasting mortality in Spain
[EN] Experience shows that static life tables overestimate death probabilities. As a consequence of this overestimation the premiums for annuities, pensions and life insurance are not what they actually should be, with negative effects for insurance companies or policy-holders. The reason for this overestimation is that static life tables, through being computed for a specific period of time, cannot take into account the decreasing mortality trend over time. Dynamic life tables overcome this problem by incorporating the influence of the calendar when graduating mortality. Recent papers on the topic look for the development of new methods to deal with this dynamism. Most methods used in dyna…
Spatiotemporal modeling and prediction of solar radiation
[1] The radiation budget in the Earth-atmosphere system is what drives Earth's climate, and thus measurements of this balance are needed to improve our knowledge of Earth's climate and climate change. In the present paper we focus on the analysis of the surface shortwave radiation budget (SSRB), which is the amount of energy in the solar region of the electromagnetic spectrum (0.2–4.0 μm) absorbed at the surface. The SSRB has to be modeled from the surface to the top of the atmosphere, jointly with information about the state of the atmosphere and the surface. These data come from satellites orbiting the Earth and are often missing or disturbed. Its interest is not only at global scales; ra…