ldmppr: Location Dependent Marked Point Processes in R

Abstract

In this article, we present $\textbf{ldmppr}$, an R package for estimating, evaluating, simulating from, and visualizing location-dependent marked spatial point processes. To date, it has commonly been assumed that the marks associated with a point process are independent of the locations. However, when dealing with many point processes, such as those arising in forestry applications, the independence assumption proves unreasonable. We introduce a practical framework for generating marked point processes with dependence between the marks and locations. We provide a brief discussion of the theory underpinning our modeling approach and outline the use of the package in a typical scenario involving real data. We highlight the functionality of the package for both generating from and assessing the goodness-of-fit of a given model, enabling users to generate realistic point patterns given a reference pattern or parameter values of interest.