EMERITAT Prof. Rainer von Sachs - WORKSHOP on "Advances in high-dimensional and time series statistics"

Tentative PROGRAM

Morning sessions : 
09h15 - Introduction
09h30 - Peter Buehlmann (ETH Zürich) : Talk title TBA 
09h55 - Johannes Lederer (University of Hamburg) : Talk title TBA 
10h20 - Lutz Duembgen (University of Bern) : Talk title TBA 
10h45 - Coffee break
11h15 - Qiwei Yao (London School of Economics) : Talk title TBA 
11h40 - François Roueff (Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Telecom Paris) : Talk title TBA

12h15 - Lunch

Afternoon session : 
14h00 - Guy Nason (Imperial College, London) : Talk title TBA 
14h25 - Michael H. Neumann (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena) : Talk title TBA 
14h50 - Hernando Ombao (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) : Talk title TBA 
15h15 - Coffee break
15h45 - Several other speakers

17h15 - Drink and social activity

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September 11, 2025
AULA MAGNA (Foyer royal, 1st floor)
Place Raymond Lemaire 1
1348 Louvain-la-Neuve Belgium

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Deadline for registration : May 31, 2025

Applied Statistics Workshop by Jens Robben

  14:30 - 17:00 : "The short-term association between environmental variables and mortality: evidence from Europe" - Jens Robben
 

Jens Robben (University of Amsterdam)

The short-term association between environmental variables and mortality: evidence from Europe

Abstract: 
In this workshop, we study the short-term association between environmental factors, i.e., weather and air pollution characteristics, and weekly mortality rates using fine-grained, publicly available data. Hereto, we develop a mortality modeling framework where a baseline model describes a region-specific, seasonal trend observed within the historical weekly mortality rates. Using a machine learning algorithm, we then explain deviations from this baseline using features constructed from environmental data that capture anomalies and extreme events. 

• Session 1 (2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m) - C.115: We provide the technical details of our proposed modeling framework, and apply it to European NUTS 3 regions (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, level 3). Our findings highlight that temperature-related features are most influential in explaining mortality deviations from the baseline over short time periods. Furthermore, we find that environmental features prove particularly beneficial in southern regions for explaining elevated levels of mortality, and we observe evidence of a harvesting effect related to heat waves.
   
• Session 2 (4 p.m. - 5 p.m.) - C.045 / Salle Gauss: Through a hands-on case study in R, participants will implement a simplified version of our modeling framework. Through various code examples and illustrations, we demonstrate data processing steps, calibrate both the baseline and machine learning models, and extract key model insights.