Dear all,

The next seminar in our series of statistics talks for people interested in quantitative methods in biology and medicine will take place on Thursday 24 August 2017 at 11:00.

Exceptionally, it will take place in the room C4 at the level -1 from the Biopôle 1 (Route de la Corniche 2, 1066 Epalinges, M2 stop: Les Croisettes).

The speaker will be Prof. John Braun (University of British Columbia, Canada).

Title: A Bootstrapped Version of the Prometheus Wildland Fire Growth Model

Abstract: The Prometheus Fire Growth Model is a deterministic wildfire simulator used to predict the growth of a wildifre, in Canada and other countries. Given weather, topographical and fuel information, the simulated fire front is plotted at equally spaced times. Unpredictability of fire behaviour makes deterministic predictions inaccurate. This talk will describe a risk analysis study undertaken using Prometheus applied to random weather streams, pointing out limitations with that approach and motivating an alternative viewpoint, based on bootstrapping. By statistically modelling the data to which the Prometheus model equations are fit, it is possible to obtain a distribution of fire front predictions. This approach allows us to estimate the probability that a growing fire will eventually burn a particular location. Repeated stochastic simulation is not required, so probability contours require no more computing time than deterministic contours. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for improved fire risk analysis.

Hope to see you there!

Valentin
(for the organizers: Zoltán Kutalik, Valentin Rousson, Frédéric Schütz)

CHUV
centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois

Valentin ROUSSON - Professeur associé, mathematicien/statisticien
Département universitaire de medecine et santé communautaires (DUMSC)
Médecine sociale et préventive (IUMSP)
Biostatistique et méthodes quantitatives

BIO 2/2ème/103
Rte de la Corniche 10, CH - 1010 Lausanne

+41 (0)21 314 73 28  TEL
Valentin.Rousson@chuv.ch
www.chuv.ch