Annual Report 2005 - Fields Institute - University of Toronto

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Speakers: Roberto Aldave and Simon Gluzman (Generation 5) Prediction of real variables with non-polynomial approximants David Banks (Duke) Scalability of models in data mining Yoshua Bengio (Montréal) Statistical learning from high dimensional and complex data: not a lost cause Merlise Clyde (Duke) Bayesian perspectives on combining models Adele Cutler (Utah State) Random forests: proximity, variable importance, and visualization Alex Depoutovitch (Generation 5) The use of grid computing to speed up prediction Jerome H. Friedman (Stanford) Importance sampling: an alternative view of ensemble learning Wenxue Huang (Generation 5) Dependence degree and feature selection for categorical data Grigoris Karakoulas (Toronto) ROC-based learning for imbalanced class problems Theodora Kourti (McMaster) Data mining in industry for process and product improvement Helmut Kroeger (Laval) Learning in neural networks with small-world architecture Xianping Liu (Generation 5) Generation 5 hybrid clustering system and its application Joaquín Ordieres Meré (U. la Rioja) Data-Mining for industrial processes Saharon Rosset and Ji Zhu (Michigan) II regularization: efficient and effective T h e N a t i o n a l P r o g r a m o n C o m p l e x D a t a S t r u c t u r e s Russell Steele (McGill) Algebraic geometry and model selection for naive Bayes networks Godfried T. Toussaint (McGill) Proximity graph methods for data mining Steven Wang (York) Clustering categorical data based on distance vectors S. Stanley Young (NISS) Linking and pattern matching in multiple large data two-way tables Ruben Zamar (UBC) Robust methods and data mining Ji Zhu (Michigan) Piecewise linear SVM paths Mu Zhu (Waterloo) An adaptive radial basis function network model for statistical detection Djamel A. Zighed (U. Lyon 2) Constructing induction graphs Alex Zolotovitski (Generation 5) Automated trade area analysis: case study of G5 MWM software application Workshop on Forest Fires and Point Processes May 24–28, 2005 Held at the Fields Institute Organizers: W. John Braun (UWO), David Martell (Toronto) and Rick Schoenberg (UCLA) Forest fires are a natural component of many of Canada’s forested ecosystems but they also pose threats to public safety, property and forest resources. Every year, forest fires cause millions of dollars worth of damage and force the evacuation of some communities. Such problems will be exacerbated as people establish more homes and cottages in and near forested areas and climate change alters forest vegetation and weather. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together forestry researchers and statisticians to identify areas of potential collaboration. The meeting was supported by Fields, Fields Institute 2005 ANNUAL REPORT 50
MITACS, NPCDS, the Sustainable Forest Management NCE, and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. The event began with a day of introduction to the language of forest fires. Rob McAlpine (Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources) gave the opening talk which gave an excellent overview of the problems in forest fire management in Ontario. Short term prediction of fires (1-10 days) remains a high priority problem. Assessing fire prevention and suppression performance is a problem that will require statistical input. Dave Martell (Toronto) continued on the management theme, highlighting a number of open problems, including a spatial queueing problem where fires are viewed as customers, and fire crews and aircraft are viewed as the servers; one of the difficulties with the queueing problems arising in this area is that the service time distribution depends on the waiting time in the queue. Mike Wotton’s (Canadian Forest Service) first talk was a useful tutorial focused on the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System. He also gave brief descriptions of some of the deterministic fire spread models that are currently in use within the forest fire community. Larry Bradshaw (Fire Science Lab, US Forest Service, Montana) gave a complementary talk, describing similarities and differences between U.S. and Canadian systems. Mike Wotton’s second talk concerned the prediction of forest fires in Ontario, using logistic regression models. Haigonoush Preisler (USDA Forest Service) concluded the first day with an overview of the statistical issues connected with wildfire prediction. She also made some comments on the possible incorporation of stochastic elements into wildfire spread models. The first day ended with a reception and a poster session. The second day began with a more statistical flavour. Rolf Turner (UNB) described how to use an R package to analyze wildfire locations as point patterns. Rolf’s focus was on the New Brunswick area. He noted a number of difficulties associated with the data; data cleaning is always necessary, especially if one wished to guarantee that there are really no wildfire occurrences in the Bay of Fundy! Andre Dabrowski (Ottawa) carried on the theme of exploring wildfire location data; he considered a power law model for interpoint distances of Canadian wildfires, drawing a tentative conclusion that the correlation dimension might be less than the embedding dimension for these data. Rick Schoenberg (UCLA) discussed point process intensity estimation for space-time point processes. His techniques led to a possible way of supplementing the burning index which is used in the U.S. T h e N a t i o n a l P r o g r a m o n C o m p l e x D a t a S t r u c t u r e s The afternoon of the second day began with Boreal forest issues. Brian Stocks (CFS) gave an excellent overview of the subject, and Steve Cumming (Boreal Ecosystems Research) discussed a number of associated statistical issues, including the problem of parameter estimation for simulation models and probability mapping of wildfire incidence. Fangliang He (Alberta) and Ed Johnson (Calgary) described some of the ecological issues. Ed’s talk dealt with an interesting interplay between evolution and wildfires and other disturbances, briefly discussing a mathematical model for tree breakage in relation to avalanches. Reg Kulperger (Western) discussed a stochastic fire spread model based on cellular automata ideas, and Dave Stanford (Western) described a technique for applying a fluid queue as a model for the perimeter of a spreading fire. The third day of the workshop centered on statistical techniques. John Braun (Western) gave a brief talk on the use of point process local likelihood techniques. David Vere-Jones (Wellington) gave an expository talk on modelling of spacetime point processes, indicating how some of the ideas used in statistical seismology might or might not carry over to the wildfire setting. David Brillinger (Berkeley) discussed two marked point process data sets, one concerning an earthquake occurring in 18th century Portugal, and the other concerning more recent wildfires in Oregon. The afternoon of the third day began with a European perspective. Fuensanta Saura Igual (Jaume I) described a spatial statistical analysis of Spanish forest fires. Domingos Xavier Viegas (Coimbra) discussed a number of issues, including the comparison of national fire danger indices. He also made some observations on the development of fire spread models, and he described some results coming from both field and laboratory experiments. This afternoon concluded with a further consideration of forest fire management issues. Marcia Gumpertz (NCSU) and David Butry (USDA Forest Service) discussed a propensity-score matching approach which could be used to assess the effects of prescribed burns. The fourth day began with a more theoretical view of point processes. Rafal Kulik (Ottawa) gave a tutorial introduction to the theory of point processes, and Dean Slonowsky (Manitoba) gave an overview of set-indexed martingales. Gail Ivanoff (Ottawa) gave a talk on spatial generalizations of the renewal process which was set at a level understandable to the many forestry researchers in the audience; time will tell whether we see the rapid dissemination of an idea stemming from deep probability theory to application in wildfire spread. Fields Institute 2005 ANNUAL REPORT 51
Page 1 and 2: Fields Institute 2005 ANNUAL REPORT
Page 3 and 4: Institute Profile 2 Message from th
Page 5 and 6: departments in universities and col
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Page 11 and 12: The Geometry of String Theory: Sept
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Special Sessions: Automatic Sequenc
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meeting introduced an Industry/Acad
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The workshop was attended by approx
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tri-annually. MOPTA 05 will be held
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Lowell Aronoff (Cannex Financial Ex
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Kuznetsov, he models each firm usin
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ment returns. The object of the res
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Camp participants Math Camp Program
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This Fields-sponsored symposium was
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Fields Institute Fellows The honour
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Fields Institute Communications Ser
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BARBARA LEE KEYFITZ Director TOM SA
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Scientific Advisory Panel 2004-2005
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and of the Board of Directors of th
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Industrial Advisory Board The Indus
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students at the University of Ottaw
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and graduate students are involved
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F i n a n c i a l S t a t e m e n t
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Fields Institute 2005 ANNUAL REPORT
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