Past events

Environmental Statistics and data analytics

The School ran a very successful training course and workshop in August this year, entitled Environmental Statistics and data analytics sponsored by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).  The training covers Statistics, risk, and uncertainty and provides specialised training and practical experience in Statistical modelling for the environmental sciences.  Sessions included managing and manipulating large data sets, data visualisation, quantifying risk and uncertainty, understanding the power and limitations of statistical methodologies and data and information management.  An important feature of the training course is the guest lecturers from other research institutes, business and government agencies.  These included Prof David Elston (BioSS), Dr Marcel van Oijen (CEH), Professor Richard Skeffington (U of Reading), Dr Ross Towe (JBA Consulting and Lancaster University) and Drs Rosalba Ignaccolo and Maria Franco Villoria from the University of Turin. 

SECURE launch

The EPSRC SECURE (Statistics of Environmental Change, Resources and Ecosystems) network held its launch event in the School in September.  Delegates from around the country attended the one day meeting which had two invited speakers – Professor Jonathan Tawn, Lancaster University, “Multivariate Extremes Value Methods for Spatial Flood Risk Assessment” and Dr Jon Blower,  Institute for Environmental Analytics, “The Institute for Environmental Analytics - delivering value from environmental data”.  The keynote address was given by Professor Ian Boyd, the Chief Science Adviser for DEFRA.  His talk was entitled ‘Ensuring a secure future for environmental statistics’ and he spoke of the nature of evidence and the importance of Open Data (noting that DEFRA had recently stated their intention to provide more than 8000 data sets).


First published: 5 October 2015