Draft Program for the January 2007 Workshop on the Application of Artificial Intelligence to Environmental and Geospatial Sciences

The workshop is organized by the American Meteorological Society Committee on Artificial Intelligence Applications to Environmental Science, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and the local offices of the Weather Forecasting Office.

This program is only a draft being worked on by the speakers and organizing committee

Thursday January 11

Speakers fly in to San Antonio Airport (airfare paid by workshop)
A rental car will be reserved at San Antonio airport for each speaker (could combine depending on schedule)
Drive to Corpus Christi (~2 hrs)
Hotel room ready at Ramada Inn in Corpus Christi for duration of stay (still checking hotels but Ramada Inn likely)
Diner with other speakers depending on arrival time

Friday January 12

Breakfast

Drive to TAMU-CC campus (10 mins) for speakers and participants.

7:45 AM - 8:15 AM: Registration and set-up

8:15-8:30: Welcome, brief introduction of committee, workshop program and rules of the workshop (lunches, Friday night social, discussions, computers for exercises …)

8:30-10:30 AM: Presentation I: Introduction and Random Thoughts on AI and Connection Between AI and Statistics, C. Marzban, University of Washington, and University of Oklahoma (sets stage for the workshop, types of problems, classification, regression, connections with statistics, the absence of meaning in the optimized model parameters for most techniques, other?)

10:45-12:15 AM Presentation II: ? Something like "Introduction to and Comparison of Algorithms for Supervised Learning" , talk discussing that for classification problems at least it is not that important which AI technique is used as long as it is properly optimized and if the performance is appropriately evaluated). Rich is not available but maybe another speaker can give a similar talk or insert other speaker but try to present a few slides summarizing his main results, or Caren good insert his talk on assessment.

12:15-12:30 Morning discussion

12:30-2:00 Drive in vans/vehicles to La Playa TexMex^? restaurant for lunch

2:00 – 3:30 Presentation III: Applications of Genetic Algorithms in the Environmental Sciences, S. E. Haupt, Penn State University (description and discussion of GAs^? in the Environmental Sciences, applications and examples)

3:45 – 5:15 Presentation IV: Talk summarizing various aspects of clustering algorithms and their applications, S Lakshmivarahan, University of Oklahoma School of Computer Science

5:15 – 6:00 Afternoon Discussion. Also computers will be set in the back of the class room for demos/excercises

7:30PM ~ 10:00 PM Meet at Corpus Christi Marina and go on boat for catered Texas Barbecue. Depending on sea conditions and temperature, the boat could stay at the marina

Saturday January 13

8:00-8:15 AM: Start of Day 2, announcements for Day 2

8:15-10:00 AM Presentation V: Neural Network Modeling in Climate Change Studies by A. Pasini, Institute for Atmospheric Pollution, Italy (application of ANNs^? to climate modeling maybe also results and the application to the Lorenz attractor is very interesting as well)

10:15-12:00 Presentation VI: Machine Learning Techniques on Spatial Grids, V. Lakshmanan, National Severe Storms Lab/CIMMS (the application of the techniques to spatial grids, analysis of satellite imagery and other scene types, other topics?)

12:00-1:15: Visit and presentation of the Harte Research Institute followed by box lunch at HRI

1:30- 3:15 Presentation VII: Fuzzy Logic, John Williams, Research Applications Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder. The talk will review the fundmatenals of Fuzzy logic and go on to discuss the combination of data mining (random forest) and fuzzy logic approach to developing and implementing diagnostics for convectively-induced turbulence based on radar, satellite, and numerical weather model data. The final portion of the talk will lead into a discussion of synergies between machine learning/data mining and the implementation of algorithms via expert systems.

3:15-4:45 Presentation VIII: Possibly talk on embedded AI techniques within GIS environments

4:45-5:15: Discussion between panel and audience of promising areas of research for AI applications to environmental sciences including development of techniques and applications

5:15 PM End of the formal portion of the workshop

Conference room will be open until 6:00 PM with computers available for test/exercises

Sunday January 14

Drive back to San Antonio and return rental car Start of 87th AMS Annual meeting

Monday January 15

Start of Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence and its Applications to Environmental Sciences

Later during that week: fly back at speaker's convenience