Jorge Mateu, Ph.D.1, Emilio Porcu, M.B.A.2, Jose-Maria Montero Lorenzo, Ph.D.3, and Gema Avilés-Férnandez, M.B.A.3. (1) University Jaume I of Castellon, Campus Riu Sec, Castellon, 12071, Spain, (2) University Jaume I de Castellon, Avenida Vicente Sos Bainat S/N, Castellón, 12071, Spain, (3) University of Castilla-La Mancha, Cobertizo de San Pedro Mártir s/n, Toledo, 45071, Spain
Abstract
Dealing with environmental problems is essential in many scientific disciplines and, in particular in many economical-based decissions which should take into account possible environmental phenomena, such as contaminant pollutants, wind speed, heavy rains, etc. Thus, knowledge of these phenomena is crucial in nowadays society. The spatial distribution of economic activity is basically inhomogeneous. The topics of economic activity location and spatial concentration of firms have attracted the attention of economists for long time ago. The interest of economists has been to characterize the patterns of geographic concentration of firms and industries, and to further analyze the forces that can allow to explain these inequalities across space.
In this paper we propose a distance-based method able to detect the spatial structure of inhomogeneous processes. We make use of Cox processes, which are a class of doubly-stochastic processes, to obtain and analyze the spatial information of polluting facilities across Europe.
Keywords: Cox processes, Economical activities, Environment, Inhomogeneous point patterns, Polluting facilities, Spatial concentration.