The Conference on Advanced Statistical Methods for Underground Seismic Event Monitoring and Verification will be held March 7-8, 2013 in Washington DC area. The ability of monitoring and verification of underground seismic events is vital to national security and disaster preparation and prevention. The research and development of monitoring and verification technology have been extensive. Significant advances have been made in sensor development and also in the development of seismic signal processing methodologies that have the ability to verify any underground seismic events as well as distinguish signals generated from different mechanisms with sensors placed a vast distance away from the event site. The research and development is highly interdisciplinary, involving geophysics, sensor development, signal processing, and statistics. To further enhance the collaboration between statisticians and other scientists in the field and to investigate the potential approaches of combining state-of-art statistical methods with advanced sensor technology, we propose to organize a conference on advanced statistical methods for underground seismic event monitoring and verification. The conference will bring statisticians and the other experts in the field together to discuss the current status of field, to exchange ideas, and to brainstorm novel approaches. The conference will also serve a venue to generate new interests among statisticians to this field, to enlist statisticians to bring in their new statistical ideas and approaches to deal with this important problem.
The conference will be collaboration between academics and federal agencies. The experts in the federal agencies will share their vision and experience and also any urgent specific problems. The conference will consists of general sessions where plenary speakers and discussants present their research findings and proposals of future research, with floor discussion encouraged, and a study group session where participants are separated into several groups and discuss and deliberate specific topics. At the end, the conference organizer will produce a report to be shared with federal agencies and participants, and be published in scientific community newsletters such as ASA news to generate interests in the larger community. The conference will attract, engage, educate and train students and next generation scientists to work in the area of research and development of underground seismic event detection technology using advanced statistical and mathematical tools. Such exposure and training is essential for them to become statisticians capable of collaborating effectively with scientists and researchers in the field and to generate new innovative approaches to real problems that have been difficult to tackle in underground event detection and related fields.
The ability of monitoring and verification of underground seismic events is vital to national security and disaster preparation and prevention. The major goal of this proposed project is to organize a conference on "Advanced Statistical Methods for Underground Explosion Monitoring and Verification" to further enhance the collaboration between statisticians and other scientists in the field and also to investigate the potential approaches of combining state-of-art statistical methods. The project fostered interdisciplinary research collaborations in statistics and seismic event monitoring and verification, as well as related statistical methodology developments in big data, computing and spatial statistics. Specifically, the project carried out the following activities: a) It successfully hosted a conference on "Advanced Statistical Methods for Underground Seismic Event Monitoring and Verification" on March 7, 2013 in Arlington, VA. The conference brought statisticians, applied mathematicians and the other experts in the important research field of underground seismic event monitoring and verification together to discuss the current status of the field, to exchange ideas, and to brainstorm novel approaches. A report based on the conference was produced and circulated among participants and several related governmental officials. Based on the discussions in the conference and also feedback provided to an early draft report, six follow-up actions were summarized. b) In addition to the main conference, the project also co-hosted two-related workshops at Rutgers (jointly with Rutgers Statistics Department) on "Theoretical Foundation of Big Data" and "Innovations in Statistics and Data Analysis". These workshops invited leading experts in big data and statistic computing and modeling to share their recent works. The activities generated stimulating discussions, many of which are related to statistical modeling and analysis of big data in seismic events monitoring and verification. c) The project actively engaged in outreach activities, including generating more interest in this area and publicizing our activities. Experts in statistics and seismic events detections were invited to visit us at our institute to exchange research ideas and develop collaborations and joint research. The collaborations are on going with discussions through phone conferences, emails and face-to-face meetings. Graduate students and young researchers were exposed and encouraged to work in this important and also related areas. The call for conference on "Advanced Statistical Methods for Underground Seismic Event Monitoring and Verification" reached a broad range of scientists and researchers in variety fields (e.g., the community of seismic event monitoring and verification, statistics, applied math and experts in government agencies). A conference website (www.stat.rutgers.edu/monitoring2013) was developed and it is available to public. A report based on the conference was produced and circulated among participants and several related governmental officials. In addition, two related workshops on "Theoretical Foundation of Big Data" and "Innovations in Statistics and Data Analysis" were also held with support in part from the conference grant. The websites of the two workshops are www.stat.rutgers.edu/seminars/bigdata2014 and www.stat.rutgers.edu/seminars/iws-2015.
