 Mapping malaria risk in West Africa using a Bayesian nonparametric non-stationary modelL. Gosoniu, P. Vounatsou, N. Sogoba, N. Maire and T. Smith Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, 2009, vol. 53, issue 9, 3358-3371 Abstract: Malaria transmission is highly influenced by environmental and climatic conditions but their effects are often not linear. The climate-malaria relation is unlikely to be the same over large areas covered by different agro-ecological zones. Similarly, spatial correlation in malaria transmission arisen mainly due to spatially structured covariates (environmental and human made factors), could vary across the agro-ecological zones, introducing non-stationarity. Malaria prevalence data from West Africa extracted from the "Mapping Malaria Risk in Africa" database were analyzed to produce regional parasitaemia risk maps. A non-stationary geostatistical model was developed assuming that the underlying spatial process is a mixture of separate stationary processes within each zone. Non-linearity in the environmental effects was modeled by separate P-splines in each agro-ecological zone. The model allows smoothing at the borders between the zones. The P-splines approach has better predictive ability than categorizing the covariates as an alternative of modeling non-linearity. Model fit and prediction was handled within a Bayesian framework, using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations. Date: 2009 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:csdana:v:53:y:2009:i:9:p:3358-3371 Access Statistics for this article Computational Statistics & Data Analysis is currently edited by S.P. Azen More articles in Computational Statistics & Data Analysis from Elsevier |
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