This event took place on the 19th September, 2025 at the University of Warwick and was attended by 25 people. The event was jointly organised by the BIR and NABES (a UK network of statisticians working in the Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Sciences). Attendees consisted of both academics and professional statisticians representing a range of organisations (BioSS, Defra, JNCC, BGS, Rothamsted Research).
The day started with an excellent keynote presentation from Professor Caroline Brophy (Trinity College Dublin) who spoke about biodiversity modelling and diversity interaction models covering recent advances in the methodology and practical implementation of such models. This was followed by a first set of discussion topics covering “Big Data and Small Sample Statistics” led by Andrew Mead (Rothamsted Research) and “Statistical Privacy” led by Professor Louis Aslett (University of Durham).
Lunch was held with a Poster session and stimulating discussions could be heard covering all aspects of the morning sessions.
The afternoon started with a discussion session led by JNCC and Defra on Statistical Indicators and the challenges currently being experienced in developing specific metrics for SDG reporting. This was followed by the final keynote presentation by Dr Nick Schurch (BioSS) covering many different aspects to environmental monitoring and how AI tools are ever increasingly being used in this area.
The day finished with coffee, cake and general discussion!
Kirsty Hassall