ISI World Statistics Congress in July: The International Environmetrics Society has offered four Invited Paper Sessions as well as a President’s Invited Paper Session at the 2023 World Statistics Congress in Ottawa, Canada. The topics spanned from new approaches to merge physical information and stochastic modelling, to applications of change points in environmental statistics.

Specifically, the sessions were the following:
1) TIES Presidents Invited Paper Session: Stochastic Environmental Modelling In A Time Of Convergence: Physics Meets Artificial Intelligence. Organizer: Yulia Gel, Participants: Prof. Lelys I. Bravo de Guenni (Chair), Prof. Stefano Castruccio (Presenter/Speaker)

2) New Statistical Methods For Surrogate Modeling and Inverse Problems. Organizer Dr Emily Kang. Participants: Alex Konomi, Robert Gramacy, Jon Hobbs, Emily Kang, Pulong Ma

3) Frontiers in Data Science and the Environment. Organiser Lelys Bravo Participants: Grace Chiu, Veronica Berrocal, Monica Pirani, Elena Naumova

4) Advancing Environmental Statistics through Online Collaborative Groups. Organiser Susan Simmons, Participants: Lelys Bravo, Wesley Burr, Matthew Wheeler

5) Novel change point methodology and their application to environmental data. Organiser Thomas Fisher Participants: Colin Gallagher, Robert Lund, Xueheng Shi, Rebecca Killick

JSM 2023 in August in Toronto, Canada, also saw three sessions organised and delivered by members of The International Environmetrics Society:

1) Wildfire, floods & droughts: targeting statistical research for impacts, adaptation and mitigation: Invited panel session, Mark Risser Chair

2) Likelihood-Free Inference for Complex and Large Environmental Data: Invited Paper Session, Amanda Lenzi Chair

3) Fighting for Performance: Spatial Statistics Computing on Manycore Systems: Invited Paper Session, Raphael Huser Chair

The International Environmetrics Society partnered with the Canadian Environmental Modelling Centre and the Trent School of the Environment to co-organise the 2023 TIES Regional Meeting, which took place in July 2023 in Peterborough, Canada, just after the 64th World Statistics Congress.

The conference was in a hybrid format, and had 26 sessions over three days, including three plenary talks. The meeting was attended by a total of 103 participants.

The International Environmetrics Society has continued to support the three online working groups, which focused on

1) Statistical Methods for Large Geospatial Datasets;

2) Statistical methods for Source Apportionment; and

3) AI in environmental statistics.

The online format allowed participation from North America, South America, Europe and India. Besides the sessions offered at the ISI World Statistics Congress, JSM 2023 and the TIES regional meeting, the working groups have to date published or submitted the following papers

1) Wikle, C.W., Datta, A. Hari, B.V., Boone, E.L., Sahoo, I., Kevila, I., Castruccio, S., Simmons, S.J., Burr, W.S. and Chang, W. (2023). An Illustration of Model Agnostic Explainability Methods for Machine Learning Applied to Environmental Data, Environmetrics, 34(1), e2772

2) Baerenbold O, Meis M, Martínez-Hernández I, Euán C, Burr WS, Tremper A, Fuller G, Pirani M, Blangiardo M. A dependent Bayesian Dirichlet Process model for source apportionment of particle number size distribution. Environmetrics. 2023;34(1):e2763

3) Martínez-Hernández I, Euán C, Burr WS, Meis M, Blangiardo M, Pirani M. Modelling particle number size distribution: A continuous approach. Under review

4) Stroud JR, Burr WS, Pirani M, Boone EL, Swallow B, Wheeler M. Fast Gaussian Processes for spatial processes - How smooth is your latent process? Under review

5) Bonas, M., Datta, A., Wikle, C.W., Boone, E.L., Alamri, F.S., Hari, B.V., Kavila, I., Simmons, S.J., Jarvis, S.M., Burr, W.S., Pagendam, D., Chang, W. and Castruccio, S. (2023). Assessing Predictability of Environmental Processes with Statistical and Machine Learning Models, under review.We thank the organizing committee: Monica Pirani, Chair (UK), Carolina Euan (UK/Mexico), Stefano Castruccio (USA), Susan Simmons (USA), Melanie Meis (Argentina), and Jonathan Stroud (USA)

The International Environmetrics Society has inaugurated a new mentoring plan which matches each mentee with a mentor, where they set together the goals and expectations during the mentoring period, and work through a time and action plan, which can be evaluated at the end through the achieved outcomes. The scheme has had an initial 30 applications.

The International Environmetrics Society has continued the successful webinar series, with 939 people currently registered, with 8 webinar events in 2023 and recorded presentations available on YouTube.

Prof. Abhirup Datta of the John Hopkins University has been awarded the 2023 Adbeel Al-Shaarawi Early Investigator award and has delivered a plenary talk at the 2023 TIES regional meeting.

1) A new The International Environmetrics Society committee will be tasked with forming new working groups to continue the successful experience of the ones in the 2020-2023 period. The committee is expected to commence its work in March 2024.

2) The call for the 2024 Adbeel Al-Shaarawi Early Investigator award has been announced and the awards committee is expected to deliberate on the outcome between February-April.

3) The executive committee has approved the The International Environmetrics Society 2024 meeting, which will take place in December 2024 in Adelaide (Australia), at the University of South Australia. Approximately 150 attendees are expected. Preparations are ongoing throughout the year on the program and logistics.