Ordinal classification of depression spatial hot-spots of prevalence

In this paper we apply and test a recent ordinal algorithm for classification (Kernel Discriminant Learning Ordinal Regression, KDLOR), in order to recognize a group of geographically close spatial units with a similar prevalence pattern significantly high (or low), which are called hot-spots (or cold-spots). Different spatial analysis techniques have been used for studying geographical distribution of a specific illness in mental health-care because it could be useful to organize the spatial distribution of health-care services. Ordinal classification is used in this problem because the classes are: spatial unit with depression, spatial unit which could present depression and spatial unit where there is not depression. It is shown that the proposed method is capable of preserving the rank of data classes in a projected data space for this database. In comparison to other standard methods like C4.5, SVMRank, Adaboost, and MLP nominal classifiers, the proposed KDLOR algorithm is shown to be competitive.