Bayesian mixture modeling for spatial Poisson process intensities, with applications to extreme value analysis

We propose a method for the analysis of a spatial point pattern, which is assumed to arise as a set of observations from a spatial nonhomogeneous Poisson process. The spatial point pattern is observed in a bounded region, which, for most applications, is taken to be a rectangle in the space where the process is defined. The method is based on modeling a density function, defined on this bounded region, that is directly related with the intensity function of the Poisson process. We develop a flexible nonparametric mixture model for this density using a bivariate Beta distribution for the mixture kernel and a Dirichlet process prior for the mixing distribution. Using posterior simulation methods, we obtain full inference for the intensity function and any other functional of the process that might be of interest. We discuss applications to problems where inference for clustering in the spatial point pattern is of interest. Moreover, we consider applications of the methodology to extreme value analysis problems. We illustrate the modeling approach with three previously published data sets. Two of the data sets are from forestry and consist of locations of trees. The third data set consists of extremes from the Dow Jones index over a period of 1303 days. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.