A minimum contrast estimation procedure for estimating the second-order parameters of inhomogeneous spatial point processes

In this paper we propose a new model fitting procedure to estimate the second-order parameters for a class of inhomogeneous spatial point processes called second-order intensity reweighted stationary processes. The proposed approach is essentially a 'minimum contrast estimation' procedure but is based on the pair correlation function instead of the commonly used K-function of the process. We show through simulations that the new procedure gives more stable estimates than the approach based on the K-function. We apply the proposed method to a tropical forest data example to illustrate its practical use.