Improving Detection of Changepoints in Short and Noisy Time Series with Local Correlations: Connecting the Events in Pixel Neighbourhoods

time-series analysis
remote sensing
NFI
Authors
Affiliation

Tuomas Rajala

Natural Resources Institute Finland

Petteri Packalen

Natural Resources Institute Finland

Mari Myllymäki

Natural Resources Institute Finland

Annika Kangas

Natural Resources Institute Finland

Published

May 16, 2023

Doi

Code in the form of an R-package available at Github as package tjdc, see dedicated page

Abstract

Detecting changepoints in time series becomes difficult when the series are short and the observation variance is high. In the context of time series of environmental resource maps, it is often safe to assume that the abrupt events are spatially continuous, and so are the changepoints. We propose to utilise this assumption by means of hierarchical models where the changepoints are modelled using a spatial model. We demonstrate utility of the approach by constructing a Bayesian model based on the Potts model, with additional assumptions relevant to changepoint detection in national multi-source forest inventory maps. We discuss implementation issues and demonstrate the idea’s performance using a simulation study. We then apply the model to forest resource maps in order to detect felling events.

Figure 6. Illustration of the changepoint detection in a subset of the main Häme region. Aerial photographs courtesy of National Land Survey of Finland, years 2012 and 2019, pixel clusters with detected changepoints using \(\gamma = 0.6, \pi^1 = 0.7\) overlaid. Changes before the first image are overlaid with black, and in such regions the natural positive trend of the growing stock is clearly visible.