Mathematical Statistics, Lund University

• The division for Mathematical Statistics, with about 15 permanent faculty members and 20 PhD students, serves Lund university with teaching and research in probability and statistics with its applications in science, technology, medicine and finance.

  Main theoretical research areas are Stochastic processes and time series analysis, stochastic differential equations, Monte Carlo-based methods, Spatial statistics and statistical imaging, Extreme value theory, Statistical software. Applied research is performed in Biostatistics and bioinformatics, environmetrics and image analysis, Financial statistics, Metocean statistics, Ocean engineering and Risk analysis with software development, Stochastic fatigue and load analysis.

• Research in statistics and the earth sciences relates to environmetrics, wind climate and ocean and naval engineering. The division has a long tradition of research in risk related problems, based on statistical extreme value theory and stochastic processes. A research group has developed the MATLAB toolbox WAFO, with computational tools for fatigue load and wave analysis; available for download.
• SEAMOCS participants: The main SEAMOCS participants are Georg Lindgren, (co-ordinator), Kryz Podgorski, Igor Rychlik, Ulla Holst, Nader Tajvidi.

  Georg Lindgren works with stochastic processes in general and statistical properties of waves in particular. Other topics are statistical extreme value theory, estimation in mixed Markov models, and environmental statistics.

  Krys Podgorski

  Igor Rychlik works with probability and stochastic processes, including extremal and crossings properties, with emphasis on reliability and ocean applications, wave modelling and impact on ships. He is a specialist in computational algorithms for marine and other transport applications, and is the main architect behind the software toolbox WAFO. Igor is now part time in Lund, and works mainly at Chalmers university where he supports the Shipping and marine technology group.

  Ulla Holst works with environmantal and spatial statistics and is responsible for strategic research programme in Spatial statistics and image analysis for enviroment and medicine, in particular modelling of athmospheric phenomena and stochastic time/space models.

  Nader Tajvidi's research deals with Statistical extreme value theory, Multivariate generalised Pareto distributions, and Computer intensive methods.

Probability and Statistics, University of Sheffield

• The Department of Probability and Statistics is one of the largest statistical research groups in the UK combining theoretical developments with practical applications of probability and statistics. Central research themes are in applied probability, statistical modelling and inference, and Bayesian methods. Particular interests are in environmental statistics and time series, extreme value theory and its applications in environmental and engineering fields, and in the study of uncertainty in large numerical models. The department has an academic staff of 13, 7 research fellows and 17 PhD students. It is a member of the UK Natural Environment Research Council's Centre for Terrestrial Carbon Dynamics, dealing with model uncertainty in large scale environmental modelling. It collaborates closely with its sister-department, the Department of Applied Mathematics, on research in remote sensing and wave statistics.
• SEAMOCS participants: Clive Anderson (team leader), Nick Bingham, Tony O'Hagan, Lucy Wyatt, Lee Siddons.

  Clive Anderson's main research interests are in statistical and probabilistic modelling and inference, particularly in connection with extreme values and environmental issues, and he also works on problems in image analysis and satellite data and on statistical methods in metal fatigue.

  Nick Bingham's interests centre on probability and stochastic processes, mathematical finance and statistics (particularly non- and semi-parametrics). His book on Regular Variation, written jointly with C Goldie and J Teugels, is an acknowledged classic on the mathematics underlying statistical extreme value theory.

  Tony O'Hagan's research is in the theory and applications of Bayesian statistics. On the methodological side, he has interests in model comparison, model uncertainty, conflicting information and inference about functions. He has been involved in numerous applications, particularly in environmental statistics and asset management.

  Lucy Wyatt has degrees in, respectively, Mathematics, Fluid Mechanics and Oceanography from the Universities of Manchester, Bristol and Southampton,and has carried out research into HF radar and its use in measuring sea surface characteristics. She was co-ordinator of the SCAWVEX consortium, to provide statistically evaluated data sets for the study of wave and current spatio-temporal variability.

Statistics and Probability, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse

• The Statistics and Probability Laboratory has about 50 faculty members and 30 PhD students. The research interests cover all types of random phenomena and range from very academic research in probability theory to applied research in co-operation with firms, research institutes in aeronautics, space research, genetics and medicine, power industry, meteorology and climatology.
• SEAMOCS participants: The main SEAMOCS participans are Jean-Marc Azaïs (Team leader), Anne-Laure Fougère, Cécile Mercadier, and Jean-Claude Fort.

  Jean-Marc Azaïs' main research deals with the geometry of random fields and the maximum of Gaussian fields and processes. He also works in design of experiments and biometry, in particular applied genetics and medical statistics.

  Anne-Laure Fougères' research speciality is bivariate and multivariate extreme value distributions and dependence concepts. She combines the mathematical and modelling interests with applications to meteorology and corrosion.

  Cécile Mercadier works with probability and statistical theory for continuous parameter processes and fields, and with application. She has also worked with numerical methods for extremes and has developed the toolbox MAGP, Maximum Analysis for Gaussian processes, in connection with the WAFO toolbox.

  Jean-Claude Fort started his research in large deviations applied to importance sampling, and since then he has worked on stochastic approximation and algorithms with application to learning in neural networks and Kohonen maps, curve classification, time series forecasting, and simulation

Hydraulics Laboratory, K.U. Leuven

• The research at the Hydraulics Laboratory of the K.U.Leuven Civil Engineering Department deals with Urban hydrology and hydraulics and river catchment modelling and with Costal and estuarine hydraulics and sediment mechanics. The laboratory has currently 6 staff members with Ph.D. (3 tenured, 3 at post-doc level) and 10 Ph.D. students.
• The SEAMOCS related research includes time series analysis of individual waves, numerical modelling of wave propagation with emphasis on wave propagation in the coastal zone using a spectral approach, the interaction of waves and currents, the transport of non-cohesive and cohesive sediments due to the action of currents and waves, and remote sensing of suspended sediments. The group has also experience in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), applied to fine-grained sediment transport in estuaries and coastal zones.
• SEAMOCS participants: Jaak Monbaliu (team leader), Alessandro Toffoli, Alessio Giardino, Patrick Willems and Jesus Portilla.

  Jaak Monbaliu has his main research experience is in spectral wave modelling, and he has participated in many research projects on topics from marine safety to sediment transport under the action of currents and waves.

  Alessandro Toffoli graduated from the Politecnico di Torino (Italy) as a civil engineer in 2001 after which he joined the Hydraulics Laboratory as a researcher. He is currently involved in the E.U. FP5 project MaxWave (Extreme waves: forecast and impact on marine structures).

  Alessio Giardino graduated as a civil engineer in 2003 from the Politecnico di Torino. He just joined the Hydraulics Laboratory of the K.U.Leuven as a researcher on a national project on the modelling of sediment transport under the influence of current and waves.

  Patrick Willems graduated as a civil engineer from the K.U.Leuven in 1993. He obtained his Ph.D. from the same university in 2000. He is specialised in statistics with emphasis on error propagation in flood modelling. His contribution to the project will be mainly in local statistical support.

  Jesus Portilla

Shipping and Marine Technology, Chalmers, Göteborg

• The Department of Shipping and Marine Technology works in ship design and structural engineering. Current projects relate to High tensile steel in fast ship structures, Safety assessment of ro-ro visors and ramps, Modelling and analysis of systems for cargo lashing, Systematic approach to ship design methodology, Water gravity waves and load effects on structures. The department includes about twenty persons including the Ph.D.-students. Five PhD students (two female) are doing research in marine safety at the Division of Marine Structural engineering and two PhD students work on water gravity waves (ship motion and effects on off-shore structures) at the Hydraulics department.
• SEAMOCS participants: Anders Ulfvarson (team leader), Lars Bergdahl.

  Anders Ulfvarson.

  Lars Bergdahl's focus is on hydraulics and computational fluid dynamics, in particular gravity waves and the effects on fixed and floating structures.

Institute of Cybernetics at Tallinn University of Technology

• The Institute of Cybernetics was founded in 1960 as an institute of Estonian Academy of Sciences and was associated with Tallinn University of Technology in 1997. The academic staff of IoC currently consists of 6 DSc, and the equivalent of 25 PhD. The SEAMOCS team forms a part of the Centre for Nonlinear Studies (CENS, Estonian Centre of Excellence in Research from 2003), founded to promote interdisciplinary studies of complex nonlinear processes that stem from solid mechanics, fluid dynamics, fractality of nature etc. The team specifically contributes expertise in analysis of long transient waves, in multi-nested modelling of wave conditions areas with complex geometry, and in mathematical description of extreme wave mechanisms.
• SEAMOCS participants: Tarmo Soomere (team leader), Sirje Keevallik.

  Dr Tarmo Soomere has been working with the general theory of weakly nonlinear waves (mainly in the framework of surface waves and Rossby waves), numerical wave modelling, and interactions of soliton-like waves.

  Prof Dr Sirje Keevallik has worked in physics of the atmosphere and lately in climatology at the Marine Systems Institute. She is member of the Science Steering Group of BALTEX.

Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, de Bilt

• KNMI is the national institute for weather, climate research and seismology. It disseminates weather information to the public at large, the government, aviation and the shipping industry in the interest of safety, the economy and a sustainable environment. To gain insight into long-term developments, KNMI conducts research on climate change. Making the knowledge, data and information on hand at KNMI accessible is one core activity. KNMI is an agency of the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management (Ministerie van Verkeer & Waterstaat), and its duties are set forth in KNMI Act (Wet op het KNMI).
• Climate research at KNMI focuses on observing, understanding and predicting changes in climate systems. Our selection of research topics is based on the state of international and Dutch climate research and on questions posed by the government and the public, such as: how does our climate change? What are the causes of climate change? What will our future climate be like? A very important question in this respect is how the "climate of extremes" will change.
• SEAMOCS participants: The two main SEAMOCS participants are Andreas Sterl and Albert Klein Tank.

  Andreas Sterl works in the Division of Ocean Research that studies the variability and predictability of the ocean and coupled ocean-atmosphere system, as well as ocean and air-sea interaction processes. For the Netherlands, the effects of climate change on sea level and storm surges are of particular interest. Based on the results of the ERA-40 reanalysis the KNMI/ERA-40 Wave Atlas has been developed. Presently Andreas is involved in a project in which a large number (>100) of climate simulations will be carried out. The results will form an unprecedented data set to look for really "rare" events and their possible change.

  Albert Klein Tank is head of the Climate Analysis Division which caries out a well-balanced mixture of applied research (services mainly for stakeholders in water management) and strategic research (papers in scientific journals). We focus on the analysis and description of the past, present and future state of the climate in the Netherlands and (Western) Europe. The emphasis is on extremes and severe weather events, because the impact of climate change is likely to be felt most strongly through changes in extremes. Albert has leads the European Climate Assessment & Dataset project in which weather observations from many European countries are collected and made accessible.

Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Norrköping

• SEAMCS participants: Karin Borenäs, (team leader), Lennart Funkquist, Per Undén, Nils Gustafsson, Markku Rummukainen.

  Dr. Karin Borenäs is professor in oceanography at Göteborg University and is also employed at SMHI as head of the oceanographic research group. She has been involved in several EU projects as task leader, WP leader and member of steering committees (VEINS, CANIGO, ODON, IRIS). Her expertise is mainly in the modelling of deep-water overflows and rotating hydraulics.

  Lennart Funkquist, is a specialist in numerical modelling of sea circulation. During the last years, special attention has been given to high-resolution operational models for the Baltic Sea. He has been the SMHI responsible person for 4 EU projects (DYNOCS, BASYS, CARTUM, ODON).

  Per Unden has his background in both Global Data Assimilation with statistical interpolation and variational methods (at ECMWF) and with Regional Modelling at SMHI (with HIRLAM). He has worked both with the national Swedish model implementations and for six years as Project leader of the international HIRLAM consortium with nine partners. He is now head of the Predicion and Analysis group in the SMHI Research Department. The group is now embarking also on high resolution modelling together with the ALADIN consortium. The other area of increasing interest is ensemble prediction, both from the global ECMWF system and for short range regional forecasting, where fundamental research is needed.

  Prof. Nils Gustafsson has a research career in numerical weather prediction and atmospheric modelling. He has been responsible for the development of numerical forecasting systems at SMHI since the 1970's and he was a founding member of the group developing the HIRLAM system for regional numerical weather prediction. His is head of the numerical weather prediction research group at SMHI.

  Dr Markku Rummukainen, PhD in meteorology, Univ of Helsinki 1997, has worked on stratospheric and tropospheric ozone topics and on global atmospheric modelling. He has been involved in elated campaigns and EU projects within EASOE and SESAME. He is presently head of the Roosby Centre and also programme director of the Swedish regional climate modelling program, SWECLIM, including work on EU-projects PRUDENCE, PRISM and ENSEMBLES.

Det Norske Veritas, Hövik

• General: Det Norse Veritas (DNV) is one of the world's leading maritime classification societies with extensive laboratory facilities at the head office at Hövik near Oslo. The Department for Strategic Research serves the entire DNV with research on safety, environment and quality management, as well as technical specialist services and software.
• SEAMOCS participants: Elzbieta Bitner-Gregersen (team leader) and Rolf Skjong.

  Elzbieta Bitner-Gregersen is Principal Research Engineer and works with modelling of waves, wind and current, wave load analysis, response analysis, structural reliability analysis, and Formal Safety Assessment (FSA).

  Rolf Skjong is Chief Scientist for Risk and reliability and is a specialist in structural reliability analysis and Formal Safety Assessment. He represents Norway in the International Maritime Organisation, Maritime Safety Committee, and is a member of various scientific committees within IMO and OECD.