Geir-Arne Fuglstad

About

Professor in statistics at the Department of Mathematical Sciences, and study programme leader for Applied Physics and Mathematics (MTFYMA).

Research

Interests

My main interests lie in spatio-temporal statistics and computational statistics. In particular, the use of stochastic partial differential equation (SPDE) models for fast computations with spatio-temporal processes. I am interested in applications in a wide range of scientific fields from epidemiology and demography to physical sciences.

Projects

IMod (Partial differential equations, statistics and data: An interdisciplinary approach to data-based modelling) This is an inter-disciplinary project building collaboration between statistics, partial differential equations, numerics, neuroscience, and fluid mechanics. The project started in autumn 2022.

MASCOT (Maritime Autonomous Sampling and Control). This is an inter-disciplinary project that aims to develop and design observational strategies in spatio-temporal domains, enabling autonomous platforms to decide on a strategy of where and when to make measurements to increase our knowledge of dynamic environments like the upper water-column. The project started in autumn 2020.

I'm involved in the development of the R-package SUMMER (Spatio-Temporal Under-Five Mortality Methods for Estimation), where the target is to take advantage of complex, but easy-to-use and computationally efficient methods for subnational mapping of under-five mortality in low- and medium-income countries. This work is lead by Jon Wakefield at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. The methods and software were used to produce official subnational under-five mortality estimates for 1990-2019 in close coordination with the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Mortality Estimation (UN IGME).

Preprints

John Paige, Geir-Arne Fuglstad, and Andrea Riebler. (2024). A joint model for DHS and MICS surveys: Spatial modeling with anonymized locations. (arXiv preprint)
Umut Altay, John Paige, Andrea Riebler, and Geir-Arne Fuglstad. (2022). Accounting for Spatial Anonymization in DHS Household Surveys. (arXiv preprint)

PhD students

I am currently the main supervisor of two PhD students:

Øyvind Auestad (2022--): Working in the interface between statistics, PDEs and SPDEs.

I am currently the co-supervisor of three PhD students:

Daniel Kjellevold (2023--): Working in the interface of spatial statistics and fluid mechanics
Simen Furset (2023--): Working in the interface between statistics and numerical analysis
Karina Lilleborge (2022--): Working on traffic analysis and spatio-temporal models on graphs.

Additional details

See here for more details.

IMod: Partial differential equations, statistics and data: An interdisciplinary approach to data-based modelling

Inter-disciplinary project building collaboration between statistics, partial differential equations, numerics, neuroscience, and fluid mechanics.

MASCOT: Maritime Autonomous Sampling and Control

Inter-disciplinary project that aims to develop and designxa0observational strategies in spatio-temporal domains, enabling autonomous platforms to increase our knowledge of dynamic environments like the upper water-column.

Publications

2025

Li, Zehang Richard; Martin, Bryan D; Dong, Tracy Qi; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Godwin, Jessica; Paige, John Leonard. (2025) Space-Time Smoothing of Survey Outcomes using the R Package SUMMER. The R Journal
Academic article
Altay, Umut; Paige, John Leonard; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne. (2025) GeoAdjust: Adjusting for Positional Uncertainty in Geostatistial Analysis of DHS Data. The R Journal
Academic article
Wakefield, Jon; Gao, Peter; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Li, Zehang Richard. (2025) The Two Cultures of Prevalence Mapping: Small Area Estimation and Model-Based Geostatistics. Statistical Science
Academic article

2021

Wu, Yunhan; Li, Zehang Richard; Mayala, Benjamin K.; Wang, Houjie; Gao, Peter; Paige, John. (2021) Spatial Modeling for Subnational Administrative Level 2 Small-Area Estimation. ICF
Report
Hem, Ingeborg Gullikstad; Selle, Maria; Gorjanc, Gregor; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg. (2021) Robust Modelling of Additive and Non-additive Variation with Intuitive Inclusion of Expert Knowledge. Genetics
Academic article

2020

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Castruccio, Stefano. (2020) Compression of Climate Simulations with a Nonstationary Global Spatio-Temporal SPDE Model. Annals of Applied Statistics
Academic article
Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Hem, Ingeborg Gullikstad; Knight, Alexander; Rue, Håvard; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg. (2020) Intuitive Joint Priors for Variance Parameters. Bayesian Analysis
Academic article
Huang, Bo; Hu, Xiangping; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Zhou, Xu; Zhao, Wenwu; Cherubini, Francesco. (2020) Predominant regional biophysical cooling from recent land cover changes in Europe. Nature Communications
Academic article
Paige, John; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg; Wakefield, Jon. (2020) Design- and Model-Based Approaches to Small-Area Estimation in a Low- and Middle-Income Country Context: Comparisons and Recommendations. Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology
Academic article

2019

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Simpson, Daniel; Lindgren, Finn; Rue, Håvard. (2019) Constructing Priors that Penalize the Complexity of Gaussian Random Fields. Journal of the American Statistical Association
Academic article
Wakefield, Jon; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg; Godwin, Jessica; Wilson, Katie; Clark, Samuel J.. (2019) Estimating under-five mortality in space and time in a developing world context. Statistical Methods in Medical Research
Academic article

2018

Bakka, Haakon; Rue, Håvard; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg; Bolin, David; Illian, Janine B.. (2018) Spatial modelling with R-INLA: A review. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Computational Statistics
Academic literature review
Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Julien, Beguin. (2018) Environmental mapping using Bayesian spatial modelling (INLA/SPDE): A reply to Huang et al. (2017). Science of the Total Environment
Letter to the editor

2017

Beguin, Julien; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Mansuy, Nicolas; Pare, David. (2017) Predicting soil properties in the Canadian boreal forest with limited data: Comparison of spatial and non-spatial statistical approaches. Geoderma
Academic article

2016

Norman, Anita J.; Stronen, Astrid V.; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Ruiz-Gonzalez, Aritz; Kindberg, Jonas; Street, Nathaniel R.. (2016) Landscape relatedness: detecting contemporary fine-scale spatial structure in wild populations. Landscape Ecology
Academic article
Kinyoki, Damaris K.; Kandala, Ngianga-Bakwin; Manda, Samuel O.; Krainski, Elias Teixeira; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Moloney, Grainne M.. (2016) Assessing comorbidity and correlates of wasting and stunting among children in Somalia using cross-sectional household surveys: 2007 to 2010. BMJ Open
Academic literature review

2015

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Simpson, Daniel Peter; Lindgren, Finn Kristian; Rue, Håvard. (2015) Does non-stationary spatial data always require non-stationary random fields?. Spatial Statistics
Academic article
Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Simpson, Daniel Peter; Lindgren, Finn Kristian; Rue, Håvard. (2015) Exploring a new class of non-stationary spatial Gaussian random fields with varying local anisotropy. Statistica sinica
Academic article

Journal publications

Li, Zehang Richard; Martin, Bryan D; Dong, Tracy Qi; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Godwin, Jessica; Paige, John Leonard. (2025) Space-Time Smoothing of Survey Outcomes using the R Package SUMMER. The R Journal
Academic article
Altay, Umut; Paige, John Leonard; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne. (2025) GeoAdjust: Adjusting for Positional Uncertainty in Geostatistial Analysis of DHS Data. The R Journal
Academic article
Wakefield, Jon; Gao, Peter; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Li, Zehang Richard. (2025) The Two Cultures of Prevalence Mapping: Small Area Estimation and Model-Based Geostatistics. Statistical Science
Academic article
Altay, Umut; Paige, John; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne. (2024) Impact of jittering on raster- and distance-based geostatistical analyses of DHS data. Statistical Modelling
Academic article
Berild, Martin Outzen; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne. (2024) Non-stationary spatio-temporal modeling using the stochastic advection–diffusion equation. Spatial Statistics
Academic article
Hem, Ingeborg; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg. (2024) makemyprior: Intuitive Construction of Joint Priors for Variance Parameters in R. Journal of Statistical Software
Academic article
Berild, Martin Outzen; Ge, Yaolin; Eidsvik, Jo; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Ellingsen, Ingrid Helene. (2023) Efficient 3D real-time adaptive AUV sampling of a river plume front. Frontiers in Marine Science
Academic article
Berild, Martin Outzen; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne. (2023) Spatially varying anisotropy for Gaussian random fields in three-dimensional space. Spatial Statistics
Academic article
Zhang, Jiachen; Bonas, Matthew; Bolster, Diogo; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Castruccio, Stefano. (2023) High-resolution global precipitation downscaling with latent Gaussian models and non-stationary stochastic partial differential equation structure. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series C (Applied Statistics)
Academic article
Paige, John; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg; Wakefield, Jon. (2022) Spatial aggregation with respect to a population distribution: Impact on inference. Spatial Statistics
Academic article
Hu, Wenjing; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Castruccio, Stefano. (2022) A stochastic locally diffusive model with neural network-based deformations for global sea surface temperature. Stat
Academic article
Paige, John; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg; Wakefield, Jon. (2022) Bayesian multiresolution modeling of georeferenced data: An extension of ‘LatticeKrig’. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis
Academic article
Hem, Ingeborg Gullikstad; Selle, Maria; Gorjanc, Gregor; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg. (2021) Robust Modelling of Additive and Non-additive Variation with Intuitive Inclusion of Expert Knowledge. Genetics
Academic article
Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Castruccio, Stefano. (2020) Compression of Climate Simulations with a Nonstationary Global Spatio-Temporal SPDE Model. Annals of Applied Statistics
Academic article
Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Hem, Ingeborg Gullikstad; Knight, Alexander; Rue, Håvard; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg. (2020) Intuitive Joint Priors for Variance Parameters. Bayesian Analysis
Academic article
Huang, Bo; Hu, Xiangping; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Zhou, Xu; Zhao, Wenwu; Cherubini, Francesco. (2020) Predominant regional biophysical cooling from recent land cover changes in Europe. Nature Communications
Academic article
Paige, John; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg; Wakefield, Jon. (2020) Design- and Model-Based Approaches to Small-Area Estimation in a Low- and Middle-Income Country Context: Comparisons and Recommendations. Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology
Academic article
Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Simpson, Daniel; Lindgren, Finn; Rue, Håvard. (2019) Constructing Priors that Penalize the Complexity of Gaussian Random Fields. Journal of the American Statistical Association
Academic article
Wakefield, Jon; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg; Godwin, Jessica; Wilson, Katie; Clark, Samuel J.. (2019) Estimating under-five mortality in space and time in a developing world context. Statistical Methods in Medical Research
Academic article
Bakka, Haakon; Rue, Håvard; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg; Bolin, David; Illian, Janine B.. (2018) Spatial modelling with R-INLA: A review. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Computational Statistics
Academic literature review
Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Julien, Beguin. (2018) Environmental mapping using Bayesian spatial modelling (INLA/SPDE): A reply to Huang et al. (2017). Science of the Total Environment
Letter to the editor
Beguin, Julien; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Mansuy, Nicolas; Pare, David. (2017) Predicting soil properties in the Canadian boreal forest with limited data: Comparison of spatial and non-spatial statistical approaches. Geoderma
Academic article
Norman, Anita J.; Stronen, Astrid V.; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Ruiz-Gonzalez, Aritz; Kindberg, Jonas; Street, Nathaniel R.. (2016) Landscape relatedness: detecting contemporary fine-scale spatial structure in wild populations. Landscape Ecology
Academic article
Kinyoki, Damaris K.; Kandala, Ngianga-Bakwin; Manda, Samuel O.; Krainski, Elias Teixeira; Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Moloney, Grainne M.. (2016) Assessing comorbidity and correlates of wasting and stunting among children in Somalia using cross-sectional household surveys: 2007 to 2010. BMJ Open
Academic literature review
Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Simpson, Daniel Peter; Lindgren, Finn Kristian; Rue, Håvard. (2015) Does non-stationary spatial data always require non-stationary random fields?. Spatial Statistics
Academic article
Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Simpson, Daniel Peter; Lindgren, Finn Kristian; Rue, Håvard. (2015) Exploring a new class of non-stationary spatial Gaussian random fields with varying local anisotropy. Statistica sinica
Academic article

Report

Wu, Yunhan; Li, Zehang Richard; Mayala, Benjamin K.; Wang, Houjie; Gao, Peter; Paige, John. (2021) Spatial Modeling for Subnational Administrative Level 2 Small-Area Estimation. ICF
Report

Teaching

Courses

Supervision

I supervise bachelor, project and master theses in statistics.

Outreach

2024

Academic lecture

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Altay, Umut; Paige, John Leonard; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg. (2024) Addressing Positional Anonymisation in Geostatistial Analyses of DHS Data. GeoMed 2024 2024-09-09 - 2024-09-11

2023

Academic lecture

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Berild, Martin Outzen. (2023) Spatially Varying Anisotropy in Three Dimensions with Applications to Adaptive Oceanographic Sampling. NORDSTAT 2023 2023-06-19 - 2023-06-22
Academic lecture

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Berild, Martin Outzen. (2023) Non-stationary Spatio-Temporal Modelling with Applications to Autonomous Sampling. Institute of Mathematical Statistics and Actuarial Science Colloqium , University of Bern 2023-11-03 - 2023-11-03

2022

Academic lecture

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Castruccio, Stefano. (2022) Non-stationary Global Spatio-Temporal Modelling Using SPDEs. Current Frontiers in Gaussian Processes 2022-08-24 - 2022-08-26

2021

Academic lecture

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Li, Zehang Richard; Wakefield, Jon. (2021) Spatio-Temporal Estimation of Demographic and Health Indicators From Household Surveys. ISBA 2021 World Meeting 2021-06-28 - 2021-07-02
Popular scientific lecture

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne. (2021) Regional barnedødelighet i Afrika – ingen skal utelates!. Researchers' Night 2021 , Trondheim 2021-09-24 - 2021-09-24

2019

Academic lecture

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Paige, Johnny; Riebler, Andrea Ingeborg; Wakefield, Jon. (2019) Disease mapping using complex survey data. GEOMED 2019 , Glasgow 2019-08-27 - 2019-08-29

2017

Academic lecture

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne. (2017) Sensitivity Analysis for Posteriors in INLA. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Statistics Seminar 2017-05-01 - 2017-05-01
Academic lecture

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne. (2017) Sverdrup-foredrag: Spatial Non-stationarity with Varying Anisotropy. Norsk Statistisk Forening Det 19. Norske Statistikermøtet , Fredrikstad 2017-06-13 - 2017-06-15

2016

Academic lecture

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne. (2016) Constructing sensible priors for spatial fields. Smögen Workshop 2016 , Smögen 2016-08-15 - 2016-08-18
Academic lecture

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne. (2016) A New Prior that Penalises the Complexity of Stationary and Non-stationary Spatial Fields. Nordstat 2016 , København 2016-06-27 - 2016-06-30
Poster

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne. (2016) Penalised Complexity Priors for Gaussian Random Fields. ISBA 2016 World Meeting , Sardinia 2016-06-13 - 2016-06-17
Academic lecture

Fuglstad, Geir-Arne; Rue, Håvard. (2016) Efficient posterior sensitivity calculations with INLA. Autumn meeting on latent Gaussian models 2016 , Trondheim 2016-11-10 - 2016-11-11

Språkvelger

Geir-Arne Fuglstad