treeSS-package: treeSS: Tree-Spatial Scan Statistic for Cluster Detection

In treeSS: Tree-Spatial Scan Statistic for Cluster Detection

treeSS: Tree-Spatial Scan Statistic for Cluster Detection

Description

Implements the tree-spatial scan statistic for detecting clusters that combine both spatial and hierarchical structures, as proposed by Cançado et al. (2025). The method extends Kulldorff's (1997) circular spatial scan statistic and the tree-based scan statistic (Kulldorff et al. 2003) by searching for anomalies in both geographic regions and branches of hierarchical trees simultaneously.

Main functions

treespatial_scan

Performs the tree-spatial scan statistic, detecting clusters defined by pairs of spatial zones and tree branches.

circular_scan

Performs Kulldorff's circular spatial scan statistic.

tree_scan

Performs the tree-based scan statistic.

Helper functions

build_zones

Constructs candidate spatial zones using circular windows centered on region centroids.

aggregate_tree

Aggregates case counts from leaves to internal nodes of the hierarchical tree.

filter_clusters

Removes overlapping secondary clusters from the tree-spatial scan output.

Author(s)

Maintainer: Allan Quadros [e-mail] (ORCID)

Authors:

• Andre L. F. Cancado (ORCID)

• Geiziane S. Oliveira

• Luiz H. Duczmal

References

Cançado, A. L. F., Oliveira, G. S., Quadros, A. V. C., & Duczmal, L. (2025). A tree-spatial scan statistic. Environmental and Ecological Statistics, 32, 953–978. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1007/s10651-025-00670-w")}

Kulldorff, M. (1997). A spatial scan statistic. Communications in Statistics - Theory and Methods, 26(6), 1481–1496.

Kulldorff, M., Fang, Z., & Walsh, S. J. (2003). A tree-based scan statistic for database disease surveillance. Biometrics, 59(2), 323–331.

See Also

Useful links:

• https://github.com/allanvc/treeSS

• Report bugs at https://github.com/allanvc/treeSS/issues

treeSS documentation built on May 16, 2026, 1:08 a.m.