Geostatistical inference in the presence of geomasking : A composite-likelihood approach

Fronterre, Claudio and Giorgi, Emanuele and Diggle, Peter John (2018) Geostatistical inference in the presence of geomasking : A composite-likelihood approach. Spatial Statistics, 28. pp. 319-330. ISSN 2211-6753

[thumbnail of 1-s2.0-S2211675317302737-main]
Preview
PDF (1-s2.0-S2211675317302737-main)
1_s2.0_S2211675317302737_main.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.

Download (854kB)

Abstract

In almost any geostatistical analysis, one of the underlying, often implicit, modelling assumptions is that the spatial locations, where measurements are taken, are recorded without error. In this study we develop geostatistical inference when this assumption is not valid. This is often the case when, for example, individual address information is randomly altered to provide privacy protection or imprecisions are induced by geocoding processes and measurement devices. Our objective is to develop a method of inference based on the composite likelihood that overcomes the inherent computational limits of the full likelihood method as set out in Fanshawe and Diggle (2011). Through a simulation study, we then compare the performance of our proposed approach with an N-weighted least squares estimation procedure, based on a corrected version of the empirical variogram. Our results indicate that the composite-likelihood approach outperforms the latter, leading to smaller root-mean-square-errors in the parameter estimates. Finally, we illustrate an application of our method to analyse data on malnutrition from a Demographic and Health Survey conducted in Senegal in 2011, where locations were randomly perturbed to protect the privacy of respondents. We conclude that our approach based on the composite likelihood is a feasible and computationally more efficient alternative option to existing likelihood-based methods that deal with positional error in a geostatistical context.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Spatial Statistics
Additional Information:
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Spatial Statistics. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Spatial Statistics, 28, 2018 DOI: 10.1016/j.spasta.2018.06.004
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1900/1903
Subjects:
?? composite likelihoodgeomaskinggeostatisticspositional errorcomputers in earth sciencesstatistics and probabilitymanagement, monitoring, policy and law ??
ID Code:
126081
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
25 Jun 2018 08:36
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
25 Nov 2023 00:23