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602 – Environmental Detection and Clustering
An Alternative Cluster Detection Test in Spatial Scan Statistics
Ahmed Reza Soltani
Kuwait University
Suja Aboukhamseen
Kuwait University
We establish a hypotheses testing procedure equivalent to the Kulldorff (1997) spatial scan hypotheses test for cluster detection, then provide transparent test statistics for cluster detection in a spatial setting. We also specify the limiting distribution of the test statistics. We apply our method to North Carolina sudden infant death syndrome cases; it detects the same primary and secondary clusters as Kulldorff (1997). Simulated data is used to compare the performance of our method with that of Kulldorff and the findings show that our test is more sensitive and accurate in detecting clusters.