Annual Report of the AMS

Committee on Artificial Intelligence Applications to Environmental Science

to the STAC Commission

2007

Sue Ellen Haupt, Chair

Members:  Dennis Boccippio, William Hsieh, Valliappa Lakshmanan;

S. Lakshmivarahan, Antonello Pasini, Mike Richman, Philippe Tissot, John Williams

Ex-Officio Members/Past Chairs:  Caren Marzban, Vladimir Krasnopolsky

            The Committee on Artificial Intelligence Applications to Environmental Science has enjoyed a very active year.  The activities have included:

• Sponsored  a two day workshop offered in Corpus Christi on January 12 and 13.  Philip Tissot was primary organizer.  The workshop is described in more detail at the website: http://aiworkshop.tamucc.edu/.
• Organized and sponsored the Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications to Environmental Science held as part of the 87th AMS Annual Meeting in San Antonio, TX (2007) on January 15 and 16.  Sue Haupt was the conference program chair.  The Conference included two joint sessions and a joint poster session with 19^th Conference on Climate Variability and Change chaired by Antonello Pasini.  The AI committee members supported this conference as session chairs and speakers.
• Designed and built a new committee website, led by Ron Holmes of the State College Office of the National Weather Service.  The site is located at: http://nws.met.psu.edu/ai/index.html.
• Reviewed and updated the committee’s Terms of Reference.
• Enabled writing a book on Applications of Artificial Intelligence in the Environmental Sciences.  This book is under contract with Springer and being edited by Haupt, Marzban, and Pasini who are all committee members.  It began with chapters corresponding to the 2006 AMS Short Course and 2007 Workshop  and has expanded to include some additional topics, primarily written by committee members and past members, with a couple additional invited chapters.  We expect to complete the submission process soon.
• Supported committee members planning related conferences, including the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks Special Sessions on “Computational intelligence in earth and environmental sciences” co-organized by Vladimir Krasnopolsky and the resulting special editions of Neural Network.
• Organized the Sixth Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications to Environmental Science to be held as part of the 88th AMS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA (2008) January 20-23.  This conference will include joint sessions with the 24^th Conference on IIPS, 19^th Conference on Probability and Statistics, 13^th Conference on Aviation, Range, and Aerospace Meteorology, and a special session on Application of Artificial Intelligence to Storm Surge Forecasting.   Committee members have been quite active in organizing these special sessions.
• Planned the First Artificial Intelligence Competition and obtained sponsorship from Weather Decision Technologies to fund cash prizes.  The aim is to develop a multi-category classifier to identify storm type (supercells, lines, pulse storms or non-severe) based on radar-derived attributes. Participants have been provided a dataset with correct labels for training and an unlabeled dataset to be tested using their technique. The committee will use pre-announced performance measures to judge which method performs best. The contest committee is chaired by Valliappa Lakshmanan and includes a member from the Committee on Probability and Statistics.  This contest will be a special session of the Sixth Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications to Environmental Science and is the first of its kind within AMS.        

            In summary, the AI Committee of the AMS has had a rather busy year and is working to spread the understanding of how AI techniques can be used to forward the understanding of environmental phenomena through conferences, workshops, books, websites, and competitions.