Abstract

Among the many tools suited to detect local clusters in group-level data, Kulldorff–Nagarwalla’s spatial scan statistic gained wide popularity (Kulldorff and Nagarwalla in Stat Med 14(8):799–810, 1995). The underlying assumptions needed for making statistical inference feasible are quite strong, as counts in spatial units are assumed to be independent Poisson distributed random variables. Unfortunately, outcomes in spatial units are often not independent of each other, and risk estimates of areas that are close to each other will tend to be positively correlated as they share a number of spatially varying characteristics. We therefore introduce a Bayesian model-based algorithm for cluster detection in the presence of spatially autocorrelated relative risks. Our approach has been made possible by the recent development of new numerical methods based on integrated nested Laplace approximation, by which we can directly compute very accurate approximations of posterior marginals within short computational time (Rue et al. in JRSS B 71(2):319–392, 2009). Simulated data and a case study show that the performance of our method is at least comparable to that of Kulldorff–Nagarwalla’s statistic.

Autore Pugliese

• Bilancia Massimo

Tutti gli autori

• BILANCIA M.

Titolo volume/Rivista

Non Disponibile

Anno di pubblicazione

2014

ISSN

1618-2510

ISBN

Non Disponibile

Numero di citazioni Wos

2

Ultimo Aggiornamento Citazioni

Non Disponibile

Numero di citazioni Scopus

1

Ultimo Aggiornamento Citazioni

Non Disponibile

Settori ERC

Non Disponibile

Codici ASJC

Non Disponibile