Seminar - Katherine Ensor

Event Date: 

Friday, April 29, 2022 - 10:00am to 11:00am

Event Location: 

  • Girvetz 1004

Seminar by Prof.  Katherine Ensor, Noah G. Harding Professor of Statistics in the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University, Director of the Center for Computational Finance and Economic Systems (CoFES) and the  Kinder Institute Urban Data Platform.

 

Title: Spatial-Temporal Modeling for Public Health Surveillance through Wastewater

 
Abstract: Wastewater surveillance has emerged as a strong tool for city, county, state and national public health departments. By examining SARS-CoV-2 RNA viral load, wastewater provides a strong signal of the extent of the virus present in a community. Measuring and modeling the evolution of the virus in a community is however fraught with many complexities. In this talk I will explore the spatio-temporal modeling based on weekly observations of a mix of measurements across sewersheds of differing scale, as well as localized lift stations. We will make use of adaptive temporal methods and the extended Hausdorff distance for spatial correlations of regions of vastly different shapes and serving different sized communities. I will also discuss the practical issues related to setting up a statistical-analysis system for real-time and regular use.