Fully decentralized inference for spatial data using low-rank models

Abstract Advancements in information technology have enabled the creation of massive spatial datasets, driving the need for scalable and efficient computational methodologies. Although offering viable solutions, centralized frameworks are limited by vulnerabilities such as single-point failures and communication bottlenecks. This paper presents a fully decentralized framework tailored for parameter inference in spatial low-rank models to address these challenges. A key obstacle arises from the spatial dependence among observations, which prevents the log-likelihood from being expressed as a summation—a critical requirement for decentralized optimization. To overcome this challenge, we propose a novel objective function leveraging the evidence lower bound, which facilitates the use of decentralized optimization techniques. Our approach employs a block descent method integrated with multi-consensus and dynamic consensus averaging for effective optimization. We prove the convexity of the new objective function in the vicinity of the true parameters, ensuring the convergence of the proposed method. We also present the first theoretical results that establish the consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimator within the context of spatial low-rank models. Simulations and real-world data experiments corroborate these theoretical findings, showcasing the robustness and scalability of the framework.