New challenges in spatial and spatiotemporal functional statistics for high-dimensional data

Spatial Functional Statistics has emerged as a powerful tool in the spatial and spatiotemporal analysis of data arising, for example, from Agriculture, Geology, Soils, Hydrology, Environment, Ecology, Mining, Oceanography, Air Quality, Remote Sensing, Spatial Econometrics, Epidemiology, just to mention a few areas of application. However, big black holes still exist in the development and implementation of new methodologies and approaches in this context. This paper provides an overview of the main references in the field of Spatial Functional Statistics, as well as the description of some key open research problems in this context.