SPRUCE

The SPRUCE initiative is concerned with Statistics in Public Resources and Utilities and in Care of the Environment. It was established in 1990 and it is an internationally coordinated effort to bring together statisticians, probabilists, and other scientists in the fields of protection and conservation of the environment, the safeguarding and garnering of resources, and the safe and reliable supply of energy. Areas of study include water resources; coal and oil; nuclear plant; industrial effluent; agriculture and the food chain; climatology; pollution and risk; ecological factors; epidemiological effects; fisheries and oceanography; and environmental monitoring. Techniques include data analysis, probability, modelling and statistical methodology.

SPRUCE encourages and supports research and development work. It has organised major international conferences in Lisbon (Portugal), Rothamsted (UK), Merida (Mexico), Enschede (The Netherlands) and most recently Sheffield (UK) in 2000. The conferences have covered various themes in environmental statistics including health, pollution and water-related issues. The proceedings from the conferences have been published by John Wiley and Sons in a series of texts Statistics for the Environment (edited by V. Barnett, F. Turkman and A. Stein). More details can be found on the home page http://spruce.deio.fc.ul.pt/.

The sixth SPRUCE conference will be arranged in 2003 by the division for Mathematical Statistics at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences in Lund June 15-19, 2003. The conference home page is http://www.maths.lth.se/conferences/spruceVI/.