This paper describes a multi-method approach to assessment of similarity of categorical maps. The assessment incorporates several newly developed comparison methods. Some are related to the Kappa statistic, others are applications of Fuzzy Set theory. By combining the methods a broad assessment of similarity will be obtained, which makes it possible to find the magnitude, nature and spatial dis...

Control charts have been broadly used for monitoring the process mean and dispersion. Cumulative sum (CUSUM) and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control charts are memory control charts as they utilize the past information in setting up the control structure. This makes CUSUM and EWMA-type charts good at detecting small disturbances in the process. This article proposes two new mem...

Background. Use of statistical process control (SPC) in healthcare is increasing but remains less common than in other industries. Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are important applications that can benefit from SPC methods, including use within existing surveillance programs to trigger investigation and intervention. The empirical value of SPC, however, typically is anecdotal and remai...

Fuzzy set map comparison offers a novel approach to map comparison (Hagen 2003). The approach is specifically aimed at categorical raster maps and applies fuzzy set techniques, accounting for fuzziness of location and fuzziness of category, to create a similarity map as well as an overall similarity statistic: the Fuzzy Kappa. To date, the calculation of the Fuzzy Kappa (or K-fuzzy) has not bee...

Nonparametric control charts are useful in statistical process control (SPC) when there is a lack of or limited knowledge about the underlying process distribution, especially when the process measurement is multivariate. This paper develops a new multivariate self-starting methodology for monitoring location parameters. It is based on adapting the multivariate spatial rank to on-line sequentia...

OBJECTIVE The authors evaluated algorithms commonly used in syndromic surveillance for use as screening tools to detect potentially clonal outbreaks for review by infection control practitioners. DESIGN Study phase 1 applied four aberrancy detection algorithms (CUSUM, EWMA, space-time scan statistic, and WSARE) to retrospective microbiologic culture data, producing a list of past candidate ou...

Fault monitoring is often employed for the secure functioning of industrial systems. To assess performance and enhance product quality, statistical process control (SPC) charts such as Shewhart, CUSUM, EWMA statistics have historically been utilized. When implemented to multivariate procedures, unfortunately, univariate demonstrate low fault sensing ability. Due some limitations charts, numerou...

BACKGROUND Influenza viruses cause seasonal outbreaks in temperate climates, usually during winter and early spring, and are endemic in tropical climates. The severity and length of influenza outbreaks vary from year to year. Quick and reliable detection of the start of an outbreak is needed to promote public health measures. METHODS We propose the use of an exponentially weighted moving aver...

Monitoring medical outcomes is desirable to help quickly detect performance changes. Previous applications have focused mostly on binary outcomes, such as 30-day mortality after surgery. However, in many applications the survival time data are routinely collected. In this paper, we propose an updating exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control chart to monitor risk-adjusted survival t...