k-nearest neighbors prediction and classification for spatial data

This paper proposes a spatial k-nearest neighbor method for nonparametric prediction of real-valued spatial data and supervised classification for categorical spatial data. The proposed method is based on a double nearest neighbor rule which combines two kernels to control the distances between observations and locations. It uses a random bandwidth in order to more appropriately fit the distributions of the covariates. The almost complete convergence with rate of the proposed predictor is established and the almost sure convergence of the supervised classification rule was deduced. Finite sample properties are given for two applications of the k-nearest neighbor prediction and classification rule to the soil and the fisheries datasets