Spatial modelling with R-INLA: A review

Haakon Bakka, Håvard Rue, Geir-Arne Fuglstad, Andrea Riebler, David Bolin, Janine Illian, Elias Krainski, Daniel Simpson, Finn Lindgren

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

Coming up with Bayesian models for spatial data is easy, but performing inference with them can be challenging. Writing fast inference code for a complex spatial model with realistically-sized datasets from scratch is time-consuming, and if changes are made to the model, there is little guarantee that the code performs well. The key advantages of R-INLA are the ease with which complex models can be created and modified, without the need to write complex code, and the speed at which inference can be done even for spatial problems with hundreds of thousands of observations. R-INLA handles latent Gaussian models, where fixed effects, structured and unstructured Gaussian random effects are combined linearly in a linear predictor, and the elements of the linear predictor are observed through one or more likelihoods. The structured random effects can be both standard areal model such as the Besag and the BYM models, and geostatistical models from a subset of the Matern Gaussian random fields. In this review, we discuss the large success of spatial modelling with R-INLA and the types of spatial models that can be fitted, we give an overview of recent developments for areal models, and we give an overview of the stochastic partial
differential equation (SPDE) approach and some of the ways it can be extended beyond the assumptions of isotropy and separability. In particular, we describe how slight changes to the SPDE approach leads to straight-forward approaches for non-stationary spatial models and non-separable space-time models.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbere1443
Number of pages24
JournalWiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Computational Statistics
Volume10
Issue number6
Early online date5 Jul 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2018

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