In Bayesian disease mapping, one needs to specify a neighborhood structure to make inference about the underlying geographical relative risks. We propose a model in which the neighborhood structure is part of the parameter space. We retain the Markov property of the typical Bayesian spatial models: given the neighborhood graph, disease rates follow a conditional autoregressive model. However, the neighborhood g...
The interest is on monitoring incoming space time events to detect an emergent space time cluster as early as possible. Assume that point process events are continuously recorded in space and time. In a certain unknown moment, a small localized cluster of increased intensity starts to emerge. Its location is also unknown. The aim is to let an alarm to go off as soon as possible after its emergence, but avoiding...
A new topic of great relevance and concern has been the design of efficient early warning systems to detect as soon as possible the emergence of spatial clusters. In particular, many applications involving spatial events recorded as they occur sequentially in time require this kind of analysis, such as fire spots in forest areas as in the Amazon, crimes occurring in urban centers, locations of new disease cases...
Disease cluster detection and evaluation have commonly used spatial statistics methods that scan the map with a fixed circular window to locate candidate clusters. Recently, there has been interest in searching for clusters with arbitrary shape. The circular scan test retains high power of detecting a cluster, but does not necessarily identify the exact regions contained in a non-circular cluster particularly w...