Special Students "University of Zurich (UZH)" in the Master Program in Biostatistics at UZH cannot register for this course unit electronically. Forward the lecturer's written permission to attend to the Registrar's Office. Alternatively, the lecturer may also send an email directly to registrar@ethz.ch. The Registrar's Office will then register you for the course.
Abstract
In many research fields, spatially referenced data are collected. When analysing such data the focus is either on exploring their structure (dependence on explanatory variables, autocorrelation) and/or on spatial prediction. The course provides an introduction to geostatistical methods that are useful for such purposes.
Learning objective
The course will provide an overview of the basic concepts and stochastic models that are commonly used to model spatial data. In addition, the participants will learn a number of geostatistical techniques and acquire some familiarity with software that is useful for analysing spatial data.
Content
After an introductory discussion of the types of problems and the kind of data that arise in environmental research, an introduction into linear geostatistics (models: stationary and intrinsic random processes, modelling large-scale spatial patterns by regression, modelling autocorrelation by variogram; kriging: mean-square prediction of spatial data) will be taught. The lectures will be complemented by data analyses that the participants have to do themselves.
Lecture notes
Slides, descriptions of the problems for the data analyses and worked-out solutions to them will be provided.
Literature
P.J. Diggle & P.J. Ribeiro Jr. 2007. Model-based Geostatistics. Springer
