Dr. Zhao Xi was invited to attend the conference Spatial Statistics 2015: Emerging Patterns

Invited by the chairman of the conference Spatial Statistics 2015: Emerging Patterns, Dr. Zhao Xi from CACSM attended the conference held in Avignon, France from June 6 to June 9, 2015. She gave a keynote speech "Application of random sets in the uncertainty modeling of sea ice in Antarctic" and acted as the convener of the session "image analysis".

Spatial statistics is a rapidly developing field involving the quantitative analysis of spatial data and the statistical modelling of spatial variability and uncertainty. Applications of spatial statistics are for a broad range of environmental disciplines such as agriculture, geology, soil science, hydrology, ecology, oceanography, forestry, meteorology and climatology, but also for socio-economic disciplines such as human geography, spatial econometrics, epidemiology and spatial planning. The availability of GIS systems and affordable geospatial databases has fuelled the interest in the statistical analysis of geographic data.

The Spatial Statistics Conferences are held every two years. The theme of 2015, Emerging Patterns in Spatial Statistics highlights the trends on various topics such as "new sources of spatial data", "predictive modelling", "disease mapping", "hazards, disasters and risks", "climate change" and "tipping points".