EU Directive 49/2002 and Spanish law 37/2006 urge cities to develop strategic noise maps and action plans to evaluate noise exposure and to establish noise abatement procedures in critical areas. However, noise mapping involves costly and cumbersome measurement procedures that can become a real issue in practice. This paper describes a distributed noise monitoring system based on WASN (Wireless Acoustic Sensor Network) and the application of a geo-statistical methodology for statistical spatial-temporal prediction of noise levels in semi-open areas, such as a typical, small Mediterranean city (Algemesí, València, Spain). This methodology is applied to the study of the spatial evolution in time of the noise pollution. To this end, a spatial statistical model is developed by using the noise pollution measurements obtained over a set of points located at some strategic locations. The geo-statistical time model allows for estimating specific noise levels and characterizing the spatial-temporal variation of the noise pollution. The results show that the developed model provides a good approximation of the measurements obtained experimentally.

Research question: The importance of balance in sports competitions has been made evident on many occasions. The dominance of a few teams over the rest of the participants in the Spanish First Division Football League has made the subject of a lack of balance an omnipresent one in sports journalism. The aim of this article is to show that the lack of balance is not just a matter of the past few seasons, but also it has been evidenced since far back in time. To test this hypothesis, the results of the league have been analyzed since its inception through various static and dynamic indices of competitive balance. Research methods: The empirical distribution of static and dynamic indices under the hypothesis of perfect balance were obtained by means of a simulation procedure. A Montecarlo test is used to contrast the hypothesis of balance in each season. The performance of this test is also evaluated. Results and findings: Both the static and the dynamic analyses confirm the competitive imbalance in the First Division league practically since its beginnings, with the occasional exception which does not invalidate this statement. Implications: The imbalance influences the low attendance at the stadiums. The Spanish league managers must contrive some measures to reduce this imbalance. The first of them should be a fairer distribution of TV rights since with the current system the ratio between the highest and lowest receivers is 12 to 1 while in the other European leagues it does not exceed 2 to 1.

Geocoding consists in converting a textual description of a location into coordinates. Hence, geocoding a dataset of events has to be carried out before performing a spatial analysis of some data. Automated procedures are necessary to geocode large datasets of events, but they can produce errors. Therefore, it is natural to ask oneself what is the minimum percentage of events that should be geocoded. An 85% of success was established 15 years ago as the first estimate of a minimum acceptable rate, becoming a reference for many spatial analysts. In this paper, the goal is reestimating a minimum acceptable geocoding match rate through the same procedure that was employed for computing the first estimate while accounting for some spatial factors that could possibly influence this estimation: intensity, clustering and aggregation levels. Several statistical techniques and the presence of nonrandomly distributed errors are also explored in this context. The results indicate that variations in intensity, clustering and aggregation levels lead to different minimum acceptable geocoding match rates. Furthermore, specific techniques such as cluster detection seem to be especially sensitive to the existence of non-geocoded data. Therefore, the highly approved 85% geocoding rate may need to be raised.

Mortality decreased in European Union (EU) countries during the last century. Despite these similar trends, there are still considerable differences in the levels of mortality between Eastern and Western European countries. Sub-group analysis of mortality in Europe for different age and sex groups is common, however to our knowledge a spatio-temporal methodology as in this study has not been applied to detect significant spatial dependence and interaction with time. Thus, the objective of this paper is to quantify the dynamics of mortality in Europe and detect significant clusters of mortality between European countries, applying spatio-temporal methodology. In addition, the joint evolution between the mortality of European countries and their neighbours over time was studied. The spatio-temporal methodology used in this study takes into account two factors: time and the geographical location of countries and, consequently, the neighbourhood relationships between them. This methodology was applied to 26 European countries for the period 1990-2012. Principally, for people older than 64 years two significant clusters were obtained: one of high mortality formed by Eastern European countries and the other of low mortality composed of Western countries. In contrast, for ages below or equal to 64 years only the significant cluster of high mortality formed by Eastern European countries was observed. In addition, the joint evolution between the 26 European countries and their neighbours during the period 1990-2012 was confirmed. For this reason, it can be said that mortality in EU not only depends on differences in the health systems, which are a subject to national discretion, but also on supra-national developments. This paper proposes statistical tools which provide a clear framework for the successful implementation of development public policies to help the UE meet the challenge of rethinking its social model (Social Security and health care) and make it sustainable in the medium term.