RSTr: Gibbs Samplers for Discrete Bayesian Spatiotemporal Models

Takes Poisson or Binomial discrete spatial data and runs a Gibbs sampler for a variety of Spatiotemporal Conditional Autoregressive (CAR) models. Includes measures to prevent estimate over-smoothing through a restriction of model informativeness for select models. Also provides tools to load output and get median estimates. Implements methods from Besag, York, and Mollié (1991) "Bayesian image restoration, with two applications in spatial statistics" <doi:10.1007/BF00116466>, Gelfand and Vounatsou (2003) "Proper multivariate conditional autoregressive models for spatial data analysis" <doi:10.1093/biostatistics/4.1.11>, Quick et al. (2017) "Multivariate spatiotemporal modeling of age-specific stroke mortality" <doi:10.1214/17-AOAS1068>, and Quick et al. (2021) "Evaluating the informativeness of the Besag-York-Mollié CAR model" <doi:10.1016/j.sste.2021.100420>.

Version: 1.1.4
Depends: R (≥ 4.3.0)
Imports: abind, matrixStats, spdep
LinkingTo: Rcpp (≥ 1.1.0), RcppArmadillo (≥ 15.2.2.1), RcppDist (≥ 0.1.1.1)
Suggests: ggplot2, knitr, rmarkdown, sf, testthat (≥ 3.0.0)
Published: 2026-01-31
DOI: 10.32614/CRAN.package.RSTr
Author: David DeLara ORCID iD [aut, cre], Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [aut, cph] (https://ror.org/042twtr12)
Maintainer: David DeLara <sfq1 at cdc.gov>
License: GPL (≥ 3)
URL: https://cehi-code-repos.github.io/RSTr/
NeedsCompilation: yes
CRAN checks: RSTr results

Documentation:

Reference manual: RSTr.html , RSTr.pdf
Vignettes: 02: Understanding and Preparing Your Adjacency Structure (source, R code)
04: Generating Estimates: Age-standardization (source, R code)
03: The CAR Models (source, R code)
01: Understanding and Preparing Your Event Data (source, R code)
06: Model Informativeness (source, R code)
08: Initial Values (source, R code)
Appendix A: The CAR Hierarchical Models (source, R code)
09: Priors (source, R code)
05: Generating Estimates: Reliability and Suppression (source, R code)
07: Sample Processing (source, R code)
Appendix B: Troubleshooting (source, R code)
An Introduction to the RSTr Package (source, R code)

Downloads:

Package source: RSTr_1.1.4.tar.gz
Windows binaries: r-devel: RSTr_1.0.0.zip, r-release: RSTr_1.0.0.zip, r-oldrel: RSTr_1.0.0.zip
macOS binaries: r-release (arm64): RSTr_1.1.4.tgz, r-oldrel (arm64): RSTr_1.1.4.tgz, r-release (x86_64): RSTr_1.1.4.tgz, r-oldrel (x86_64): RSTr_1.1.4.tgz
Old sources: RSTr archive

Linking:

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