geoCount: An R Package for the Analysis of Geostatistical Count Data

Abstract

We describe the R package geoCount for the analysis of geostatistical count data. The package performs Bayesian analysis for the Poisson-lognormal and binomial-logitnormal spatial models, which are subclasses of the class of generalized linear spatial models proposed by Diggle, Tawn, and Moyeed (1998). The package implements the computational intensive tasks in C++ using an R/C++ interface, and has parallel computation capabilities to speed up the computations. geoCount also implements group updating, Langevin- Hastings algorithms and a data-based parameterization, algorithmic approaches proposed by Christensen, Roberts, and Sköld (2006) to improve the efficiency of the Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms. In addition, the package includes functions for simulation and visualization, as well as three geostatistical count datasets taken from the literature. One of those is used to illustrate the package capabilities. Finally, we provide a side-by-side comparison between geoCount and the R packages geoRglm and INLA.