Environmental health studies are of great interest in research to evaluate the mortality-temperature relationship by adjusting spatially correlated random effects as well as identifying significant change points in temperature. However, this relationship is often not expressed using parametric models, which makes identifying change points an even more challenging problem. This paper proposes a unified semiparametric approach to simultaneously identify the nonlinear mortality-temperature relationship and detect spatially-dependent change points. A unified method is proposed for the model estimation, spatially dependent change points detection, and testing whether they are significant simultaneously by a permutation-based test. We operate under the assumption that change points remain constant, yet acknowledge the uncertainty regarding their precise number. These change points are influenced by the smoothing of an unknown function, which in turn relies on a smoothing variable and spatial random effects. Consequently, the detection of change points may be influenced by spatial effects. In this paper, several simulation studies are conducted to evaluate the performance of our proposed approach. The advantages of this unified approach are demonstrated using epidemiological data on mortality and temperature.
Research Date	
              Research Department	
              
          Research File	
          
      Research Journal	
              PloS one
          Research Member	
          
      Research Publisher	
              PLOS
          Research Rank	
              Q1
          Research Vol	
              19
          Research Website	
              https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0315413
          Research Year	
              2024
          Research_Pages
              1-21
          Research Abstract