Statistics and Its Interface

Volume 2 (2009)

Number 1

A minimum contrast estimation procedure for estimating the second-order parameters of inhomogeneous spatial point processes

Pages: 91 – 99

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4310/SII.2009.v2.n1.a9

Author

Yongtao Guan (Division of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, Yale University, New Haven, Conn., U.S.A.)

Abstract

In this paper we propose a new model fitting procedure to estimate the second-order parameters for a class of inhomogeneous spatial point processes called second-order intensity reweighted stationary processes. The proposed approach is essentially a ‘minimum contrast estimation’ procedure but is based on the pair correlation function instead of the commonly used $K$-function of the process. We show through simulations that the new procedure gives more stable estimates than the approach based on the $K$-function. We apply the proposed method to a tropical forest data example to illustrate its practical use.

Keywords

minimum contrast estimation, pair correlation function, second-order intensity reweighted stationary process

Published 1 January 2009