GESTAR II Seminar Series, May 11 at 11:00am

Join us for a virtual seminar by Dr. Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth System Science, University of California Irvine (UCI). Her talk is titled "Preserving space-time patterns and extremes in satellite precipitation retrievals: from spectral error analysis and diagnostics to Machine Learning."

Date and Time: Thursday, May 11, 2023 at 11:00am

Join us via Teams.

Abstract: 

"In this talk, I will provide a synthesis of our research in understanding and quantifying systematic and random errors in precipitation retrievals from multi-satellite platforms towards improving the accuracy and resolution of global precipitation products. I will first describe our efforts on multi-scale space-time decomposition of state-of the-art satellite precipitation estimates (QPEs) to diagnose the nature of the error and build a spectral error model that accounts for the space-time dynamics of precipitation. Diagnosing and quantifying the systematic error (intensity, wavenumber and frequency dependent) and the random error (additive or multiplicative) allows to characterize uncertainty at any time and location and across a range of scales. For hydrologic applications, getting the timing of storms right is also important and our event-based error decomposition allows to detect and diagnose systematic biases in the start, peak and end time of storms as well as event intensity. We apply the knowledge gained from our spectral decomposition analysis into constructing appropriate loss functions for training the new class of Machine Learning (ML) retrieval algorithms and show significant improvements in preserving extremes and the space-time structure of precipitation across multiple scales."

Biography:

Dr. Efi Foufoula-Georgiou is a Distinguished Professor and the Samueli Endowed Chair in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and in Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. From 1989-2016 she was a McKnight Distinguished Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Director of the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, and Director of the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED). Dr. Foufoula-Georgiou studies hydrology and geomorphology with an emphasis on understanding the space-time organization and multiscale structure of precipitation and landforms for improving modeling and prediction. She has served the community in several capacities, including member of the NAS Water Science and Technology Board, NSF Advisory Council for Geosciences, NASA Earth Sciences Subcommittee, and Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. Her elected positions include Chair of the Board of Directors of CUAHSI, Trustee of UCAR, President of the Hydrology Section of AGU, and AMS Councilor. Dr. Foufoula-Georgiou has been the recipient of several awards including the EGU John Dalton Medal, AGU Hydrologic Sciences Award, AMS Hydrologic Sciences Medal, and AGU Robert Horton Medal.  She received a diploma in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and an M.S. and Ph.D. (1985) in Environmental Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville. She is a fellow of AGU, AMS, AAAS and member of the European Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the American Society of Arts and Sciences.