Variational approach for spatial point process intensity estimation

Abstract

We introduce a new variational estimator for the intensity function of an inhomogeneous spatial point process with points in the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space and observed within a bounded region. The variational estimator applies in a simple and general setting when the intensity function is assumed to be of log-linear form $\beta +{\theta }^{\top }z(u)$ where $z$ is a spatial covariate function and the focus is on estimating $\theta$. The variational estimator is very simple to implement and quicker than alternative estimation procedures. We establish its strong consistency and asymptotic normality. We also discuss its finite-sample properties in comparison with the maximum first order composite likelihood estimator when considering various inhomogeneous spatial point process models and dimensions as well as settings were $z$ is completely or only partially known.

Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/13-BEJ516 the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm)

References in corpus (1)

• Variational estimators for the parameters of Gibbs point process models

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