THE FIELDS INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES

April 21-24, 2015 Workshop on Complex Spatio-temporal Data Structures: Methods and applications Fields Institute, 222 College St., Toronto Organizer: Patrick Brown and Jamie Stafford, University of Toronto

This four day workshop will bring together statistical methodologists and applied statisticians with a variety of expertise and research areas but with a common interest in complex and non-standard spatio-temporal problems. 'Complex' data includes that which is observed irregularly or in an unbalanced fashion, aggregated spatially to arbitrary and variable regions, and/or exhibiting hierarchical but non-nested correlations. Distributions and likelihoods for such data often depend on the behaviour of the underlying process throughout it's entire spatial extent and not only at the locations where data are observed. The high dimensionality of the resulting problem requires inference methodologies exhibiting a combination of model simplifications, approximations of estimators and likelihood functions, and/or computational and algorithmic efficiencies. Unlike many other 'big data' problems, however, an understanding of the physical properties of the spatio-temporal process in question often enables many simplifying assumptions to be made which lead to convenient and enabling mathematical properties (i.e.Markov property, stationarity, various forms of conditional independence).

Examples of statistical applications covered will include:

• Spatial epidemiology: inference on variations in disease risk in space and time using complex forms of case incidence data
• Forestry: inference on forest fire ignitions with location data subject to aggregation and censoring
• Fisheries: inference on species abundance from ocean surveys and catch data

Related areas of statistical methodology include:

• Bayesian inference for parametric models
• Non-parametrics and smoothing
• Functional data analysis
• Statistical computing

Format

The workshop will be structured to maximize the amount of interaction amongst the attendees, and aims to encourage problem solving, identification of open problems, and matching of emerging methods development to relevant areas of applied statistics research. Each day will involve two or three 45-minute talks, each followed up by a pre-arranged discussant and ample time for general questions and comments. Talks will include overviews on statistical issues in substantive applied areas (public health, forestry, fisheries), and recent methods developments. The remainder of the conference will involve a number of shorter presentations, panel discussions, and breakout groups.

 

Schedule

Workshop will run from the morning of Tuesday, April 21 to the afternoon of Friday, April 24.

First scientific session: 10.30am Tuesday 21 April
Drinks reception: 6.30pm Tuesday 21 April
Banquet: 7pm Thursday 23 April
End of final session: 3.30pm Friday 24 April

 

Confirmed speakers

• Peter Craigmile Ohio State University
• Lance Waller Emory University
• Daniel Simpson University of Warwick
• Michael Stein University of Chicago
• Benjamin Taylor Lancaster University

Discussants and other contributors

• John Braun University of British Columbia Okanagan
• Patrick Brown University of Toronto and Cancer Care Ontario
• Noel Cadigan Memorial University
• Charmaine Dean Western University
• Thierry Duchesne l'Universit Laval
• Chris Field Dalhousie University
• Joan Hu Simon Fraser University
• Farouk Nathoo University of Victoria
• Joanna Mills Flemming Dalhousie Univeristy
• Duncan Murdoch Western University
• Jamie Stafford University of Toronto
• Mahmouid Torabi University of Manitoba
• Douglas Woolford Wilfrid Laurier University

Confirmed Participants as of April 9:
*Pending Confirmation

	Full Name	University/Affiliation
	Aeberhard, William	Dalhousie University
	Albert-Green, Alisha	University of Western Ontario
*	Banterle, Marco	Université Paris Dauphine
	Berke, Olaf	University of Guelph
	Braun, John	University of British Columbia
	Brown, Patrick	Cancer Care Ontario
	Cadigan, Noel	Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland
	Chin, Andrew	University of Toronto
	Craigmile, Peter	Ohio State University
*	Davison, Anthony	Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
	Dean, Charmaine	Western University
	Demirtas, Derya	University of Toronto
	Duchesne, Thierry	Université Laval
	Feldman, Laura	University of Toronto
	Feng, Cindy	University of Saskatchewan
	Field, Chris	Dalhousie University
	Hu, Joan	Simon Fraser University
	Li, Ye	Public Health Ontario
	Ma, Renjun	University of New Brunswick
	MacIntyre, Elaina	Public Health Ontario
	Mills Flemming, Joanna	Dalhousie University
	Murdoch, Duncan	University of Western Ontario
	Nathoo, Farouk	University of Victoria
	Reid, Nancy	University of Toronto
	Rosychuk, Rhonda	University of Alberta
	Ruppert, Jonathan	University of Toronto
	Schiks, Tom	University of Toronto
	Schoenberg, Rick	University of California, Los Angeles
	Simpson, Daniel	University of Warwick
	Soltanifar, Mohsen	Publich Health Sciences
	Stafford, James	University of Toronto
	Stein, Michael	University of Chicago
	Taylor, Benjamin	University of Lancaster
	Torabi, Mahmoud	Manitoba Institute of Child Health (MICH), University of Manitoba
	Waller, Lance	Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
	Watts, Alexander	University of Toronto
	Woolford, Douglas	Wilfrid Laurier University
	Xiao, Bowei	University of Toronto

 

 

The event is planned as part of the thematic program in Big Data to be held at the Fields Institute in 2015

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