Modeling Spatial Processes with Unknown Extremal Dependence Class

Raphaël Huser and Jennifer L. Wadsworth

Journal of the American Statistical Association, 2019, vol. 114, issue 525, 434-444

Abstract: Many environmental processes exhibit weakening spatial dependence as events become more extreme. Well-known limiting models, such as max-stable or generalized Pareto processes, cannot capture this, which can lead to a preference for models that exhibit a property known as asymptotic independence. However, weakening dependence does not automatically imply asymptotic independence, and whether the process is truly asymptotically (in)dependent is usually far from clear. The distinction is key as it can have a large impact upon extrapolation, that is, the estimated probabilities of events more extreme than those observed. In this work, we present a single spatial model that is able to capture both dependence classes in a parsimonious manner, and with a smooth transition between the two cases. The model covers a wide range of possibilities from asymptotic independence through to complete dependence, and permits weakening dependence of extremes even under asymptotic dependence. Censored likelihood-based inference for the implied copula is feasible in moderate dimensions due to closed-form margins. The model is applied to oceanographic datasets with ambiguous true limiting dependence structure. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01621459.2017.1411813 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jnlasa:v:114:y:2019:i:525:p:434-444

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/UASA20

DOI: 10.1080/01621459.2017.1411813

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the American Statistical Association is currently edited by Xuming He, Jun Liu, Joseph Ibrahim and Alyson Wilson

More articles in Journal of the American Statistical Association from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().