# Simulation-based validation of sampling designs and prediction models for environmental monitoring

**URL:** <https://discourse.mc-stan.org/t/simulation-based-validation-of-sampling-designs-and-prediction-models-for-environmental-monitoring/26076>\
**Category:** Publicity\
**Tags:** gaussian-process, multivariate-normal\
**Created:** [January 24, 2022, 5:17pm UTC](https://discourse.mc-stan.org/t/simulation-based-validation-of-sampling-designs-and-prediction-models-for-environmental-monitoring/26076 "2022-01-24T17:17:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![potash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@potash](https://discourse.mc-stan.org/u/potash)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2022, 5:17pm UTC](https://discourse.mc-stan.org/t/simulation-based-validation-of-sampling-designs-and-prediction-models-for-environmental-monitoring/26076/1 "2022-01-24T17:17:52Z")

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I just finally published my first two articles with Stan! Both model the latent ground truth of an environmental variable in the context of high measurement/sampling variability. Then they do what I’m calling simulation-based validation: draw posterior simulations of the ground truth from the model and use them to validate things.

In [one article](https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR031115), we cross-validated previously published prediction models of bacteria levels in Lake Michigan which previous articles did ignoring the large measurement errors.

In [another article](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2021.115693) we validated sampling designs for estimating soil organic carbon stocks in an agricultural field.

You can find pre-print versions of the articles on my [website](http://www.k2co3.net/research). If anyone has any questions/feedback on this work or is working on similar things and wants to chat/collaborate, please reply here or email me. Thanks so much to everyone (@rtrangucci@bgoodri and @James_Savage come to mind) who answered my questions both on this forum and off it over the years!