Variograms for spatial functional data with phase variation

Abstract: Spatial, amplitude and phase variations in spatial functional data are confounded. Conclusions from the popular functional trace variogram, which quantifies spatial variation, can be misleading when analysing misaligned functional data with phase variation. To remedy this, we describe a framework that extends amplitude-phase separation methods in functional data to the spatial setting, with a view towards performing clustering and spatial prediction. We propose a decomposition of the trace variogram into amplitude and phase components and quantify how spatial correlations between functional observations manifest in their respective amplitude and phase components. This enables us to generate separate amplitude and phase clustering methods for spatial functional data, and develop a novel spatial functional interpolant at unobserved locations based on combining separate amplitude and phase predictions. Through simulations and real data analyses, we found that the proposed methods result in more accurate predictions and more interpretable clustering results.