R: The Fiksel Interaction

Fiksel {spatstat} | R Documentation

## The Fiksel Interaction

### Description

Creates an instance of Fiksel's double exponential pairwise interaction point process model, which can then be fitted to point pattern data.

### Usage

      Fiksel(r, hc=NA, kappa)

### Arguments

`r` | The interaction radius of the Fiksel model
`hc` | The hard core distance
`kappa` | The rate parameter

### Details

Fiksel (1984) introduced a pairwise interaction point process with the following interaction function c. For two points u and v separated by a distance d=||u-v||, the interaction c(u,v) is equal to 0 if d < h, equal to 1 if d > r, and equal to

exp(a * exp(-kappa * d))

if h <= d <= r, where h,r,kappa,a are parameters.

A graph of this interaction function is shown in the Examples. The interpretation of the parameters is as follows.

- h is the hard core distance: distinct points are not permitted to come closer than a distance h apart.

- r is the interaction range: points further than this distance do not interact.

- kappa is the rate or slope parameter, controlling the decay of the interaction as distance increases.

- a is the interaction strength parameter, controlling the strength and type of interaction. If a is zero, the process is Poisson. If `a` is positive, the process is clustered. If `a` is negative, the process is inhibited (regular).

The function `ppm()`, which fits point process models to point pattern data, requires an argument of class `"interact"` describing the interpoint interaction structure of the model to be fitted. The appropriate description of the Fiksel pairwise interaction is yielded by the function `Fiksel()`. See the examples below.

The parameters h, r and kappa must be fixed and given in the call to `Fiksel`, while the canonical parameter a is estimated by `ppm()`.

To estimate h, r andkappa it is possible to use `profilepl`. The maximum likelihood estimator ofh is the minimum interpoint distance.

If the hard core distance argument `hc` is missing or `NA`, it will be estimated from the data when `ppm` is called. The estimated value of `hc` is the minimum nearest neighbour distance multiplied by n/(n+1), where n is the number of data points.

See also Stoyan, Kendall and Mecke (1987) page 161.

### Value

An object of class `"interact"` describing the interpoint interaction structure of the Fiksel process with interaction radius r, hard core distance `hc` and rate parameter `kappa`.

### Author(s)

Adrian Baddeley Adrian.Baddeley@curtin.edu.au and Rolf Turner r.turner@auckland.ac.nz

### References

Baddeley, A. and Turner, R. (2000) Practical maximum pseudolikelihood for spatial point patterns. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics 42, 283–322.

Fiksel, T. (1984) Estimation of parameterized pair potentials of marked and non-marked Gibbsian point processes. Electronische Informationsverabeitung und Kybernetika 20, 270–278.

Stoyan, D, Kendall, W.S. and Mecke, J. (1987) Stochastic geometry and its applications. Wiley.

### See Also

`ppm`, `pairwise.family`, `ppm.object`, `StraussHard`

### Examples

       Fiksel(r=1,hc=0.02, kappa=2)
       # prints a sensible description of itself

       data(spruces)
       X <- unmark(spruces)

       fit <- ppm(X ~ 1, Fiksel(r=3.5, kappa=1))
       plot(fitin(fit))

[Package spatstat version 1.63-3 Index]