This award will support collaborative research by Professor James Press of the University of California at Riverside and Professor Ruben Klein of the National Laboratory for Scientific Computation (LNCC) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The aim of the research is to study multivariate Bayesian classification methods in spatial statistics. Image reconstruction and the contextual classification of remotely sensed data using iterative Bayesian and empirical Bayesian procedures will add an international dimension to this collaboration. The researchers, who have coauthored a number of journal articles on this topic, plan to extend existing models to broader contexts and to improve current models in various ways. Both simulated and actual data will be studied. They propose to study "nugget effect" models, various spatial correlation structures, and adaptive starting value models using natural conjugate prior families (while using iterative procedures for predictive classification). Results should be applicable to satellite imagery in agricultural and geophysical contexts, image reconstruction, and problems in pattern recognition.
