Animal Behavior and Welfare Studies
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L mLOS is an open-source R tool that uses animal-level intake and outcome records to analyze LOS distributions and competing outcomes using survival-analysis methods and includes hand-derived exact tests and simulation fixtures that recover known behavior.
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Length of stay (LOS) is critical in shelter management and animal welfare. Its assessment by calendar period must account for animals whose stay overlaps with period boundaries. mLOS is an open-source R tool that uses animal-level intake and outcome records to analyze LOS distributions and competing outcomes using survival-analysis methods. A companion Python package, ShelterDataPrep, prepares raw data extracts for analysis. The factors used are calendar period, intake type, and a user-defined animal group. The counting-process formulations left-truncate stays in progress at the beginning of a period and right-censor stays ongoing at period end. Kaplan-Meier estimates the stay distribution, Aalen-Johansen gives cumulative incidence by outcome type, and Cox and Weibull regressions compute the effect of each factor adjusted for others. A run computes in-care stay curves, remaining stay curves, competing outcomes, outcome conditional on tenure, and population-load figures including census. Each is produced for the unified sample and separately by factor. Pooled and per-factor Cox regressions produce hazard ratios while corresponding Weibull regressions produce LOS ratios. Validation includes hand-derived exact tests and simulation fixtures that recover known behavior. The outputs comprise plots, companion CSVs, a JSON with complete results, a consolidated workbook, and an experimental slide deck.
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@article{Mavrovouniotis2026mLOS,
title = {The mLOS Open-Source Software for Analyzing Length of Stay in Animal Shelters},
author = {Michael Loizos Mavrovouniotis},
journal = {Animals},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.3390/ani16203207},
url = {https://doi.org/10.3390/ani16203207}
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