The key operation in Bayesian inference is to compute high-dimensional integrals. An old approximate technique is the Laplace method or approximation, which dates back to Pierre-Simon Laplace (1774). This simple idea approximates the integrand with a second-order Taylor expansion around the mode...

In this work we propose a model for the intensity of a space–time point process, specified by a sequence of spatial surfaces that evolve dynamically in time. This specification allows flexible structures for the components of the model, in order to handle temporal and spatial variations both...

The integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA) for Bayesian inference is an efficient approach to estimate the posterior marginal distributions of the parameters and latent effects of Bayesian hierarchical models that can be expressed as latent Gaussian Markov random fields (GMRF). The...