Debjoy Thakur

Debjoy Thakur

This research considers a scalable inference for spatial data modeled through Gaussian intrinsic conditional autoregressive (ICAR) structures. The classical estimation method, restricted maximum likelihood (REML), requires repeated inversion and factorization of large, sparse precision matrices, which makes this computation costly. To sort this problem out, we propose a variational restricted maximum likelihood (VREML) framework that approximates the intractable marginal likelihood using a Gaussian variational distribution. By constructing an evidence lower bound (ELBO) on the restricted likelihood, we derive a computationally efficient coordinate-ascent algorithm for jointly estimating the spatial random effects and variance components. In this article, we theoretically establish the monotone convergence of ELBO and mathematically exhibit that the variational family is exact under Gaussian ICAR settings, which is an indication of nullifying approximation error at the posterior level. We empirically establish the supremacy of our VREML over MLE and INLA.

Debjoy Thakur

The application of deep neural networks in geospatial data has become a trending research problem in the present day. A significant amount of statistical research has already been introduced, such as generalized least square optimization by incorporating spatial variance-covariance matrix, considering basis functions in the input nodes of the neural networks, and so on. However, for lattice data, there is no available literature about the utilization of asymptotic analysis of neural networks in regression for spatial data. This article proposes a consistent localized two-layer deep neural network-based regression for spatial data. We have proved the consistency of this deep neural network for bounded and unbounded spatial domains under a fixed sampling design of mixed-increasing spatial regions. We have proved that its asymptotic convergence rate is faster than that of \cite{zhan2024neural}'s neural network and an improved generalization of \cite{shen2023asymptotic}'s neural network structure. We empirically observe the rate of convergence of discrepancy measures between the empirical probability distribution of observed and predicted data, which will become faster for a less smooth spatial surface. We have applied our asymptotic analysis of deep neural networks to the estimation of the monthly average temperature of major cities in the USA from its satellite image. This application is an effective showcase of non-linear spatial regression. We demonstrate our methodology with simulated lattice data in various scenarios.