Advances in spatial functional statistics

This is the editorial letter for the Special Issue dedicated to Spatial Functional Statistics, motivated by the joint VII International Workshop on Spatio-temporal Modelling (METMAVII) and the 2014 meeting of the research group for Statistical Applications to Environmental Problems (GRASPA14), which took place in Turin (Italy) from 10 to 12 September 2014. This special issue summarises and discusses peer-reviewed contributions related to the analysis of functional data showing complex characteristics such as spatial dependence structures. The selection of papers comprises both new methodological proposals and a wide range of applications. In particular, we cover a wide range of statistical aspects, comprising prediction of functional data with spatial dependence, optimal sampling designs using functional covariates, non-parametric clustering methods for dependent functional data, and depth measures for spatially dependent functional data.