TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pohle, Jennifer
A1  - Adam, Timo
A1  - Beumer, Larissa
T1  - Flexible estimation of the state dwell-time distribution in hidden semi-Markov models
T2  - Computational statistics & data analysis
N2  - Hidden semi-Markov models generalise hidden Markov models by explicitly modelling the time spent in a given state, the so-called dwell time, using some distribution defined on the natural numbers. While the (shifted) Poisson and negative binomial distribution provide natural choices for such distributions, in practice, parametric distributions can lack the flexibility to adequately model the dwell times. To overcome this problem, a penalised maximum likelihood approach is proposed that allows for a flexible and data-driven estimation of the dwell-time distributions without the need to make any distributional assumption. This approach is suitable for direct modelling purposes or as an exploratory tool to investigate the latent state dynamics. The feasibility and potential of the suggested approach is illustrated in a simulation study and by modelling muskox movements in northeast Greenland using GPS tracking data. The proposed method is implemented in the R-package PHSMM which is available on CRAN.
KW  - Penalized likelihood
KW  - Smoothing
KW  - Time series
KW  - Animal movement modeling
Y1  - 2022
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/63358
SN  - 0167-9473
SN  - 1872-7352
VL  - 172
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -