Topic：Eigenvector Spatial Filtering: motivation, conceptualization, mathematics, and applications

Speaker：Professor Daniel A. Griffith, University of Texas at Dallas 

Abstract：Spatial autocorrelation is everywhere—it underlies art, is found in common games, allows such viewings as television, and can be the artifact of a particular zonation scheme. In its more serious form, it creates a number of challenges in science. Eigenvector spatial filtering is a powerful new methodology that addresses these scientific challenges by creating a synthetic proxy variable, a linear combination of eigenvectors extracted from a spatial connectivity matrix that ties geographic objects together in space, and then adding this proxy variate as a control variable to a model specification. This control variable, whose individual eigenvectors are distinct map patterns, identifies and isolates the stochastic spatial dependencies among georeferenced observations, thus allowing spatial analysis to proceed as if observations are independent. This presentation briefly outlines the motivation and development of this methodology, highlights some of its interesting mathematical aspects, and illustrates some of its advantages vis-à-vis popular spatial autoregressive model specifications.

Profile：Dr. Daniel A. Griffith is an Ashbel Smith Professor and a faculty member in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences (previously, Social Sciences) at UT-Dallas, Associate Program Head of the Geography-Geospatial Sciences Program in the Geographic Information Sciences, editor of Geographical Analysis (2008-2011), and a member of the Steering Committee of the Commission of Modeling Geographical Systems, International Geographical Union (2008-2012). He teaches courses about spatial statistics, GIScience research design, mathematical statistics, and spatial organization and concepts. His primary areas of research are in spatial statistics, quantitative urban and economic geography, and applied statistics. In chronologicaly order, he held faculty positons at Ryerson Polytechnical University, at SUNY/Buffalo, at Syracuse University, and at the University of Miami, before moving to UT-Dallas in 2005. He has been a visiting professor at Oregon State University (under the auspices of the USEPA EMAP Program), Erasmus University/Rotterdam, University of Rome I (La Sapienza), Cambridge University (under the auspices of the Leverhulme Trust), and University of Jyväskylä. He also has been an American Statistical Association Research Fellow to USDA-NASS, a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research/Rostock (Germany), a Fulbright Research Fellow (to the University of Toronto), a Fulbright Senior Specialist (to the University of Alberta), a Guggenheim Fellow, an elected Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, a elected founding fellow of the Spatial Econometrics Association, and a past president of the North American Regional Science Council.

Host: Prof. Jinfeng Wang

Time: May 28, 2013 16:00 pm

Venue：Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research Chinese Academy of Sciences Conference Room: 2321