Spatiotemporal dynamics of natural phenomena

Abstract

This special issue of SERRA is devoted to selected and revised papers presented at the fourth edition of the International Workshop on Spatio-Temporal Modelling (METMA4) that was held in Alghero, Italy, on 24–26 September, 2008. In recent years, spatiotemporal modelling has become one of the most interesting and, at the same time, challenging research areas of natural sciences. The relevant literature is growing fast and along directions that range from theoretical works to methodological developments to real world applications. Spatiotemporal systems modelling involves the synthesis of a rich interdisciplinary body of knowledge for which it is necessary to establish a solid theoretical foundation and a science-based methodology with both researchers and practitioners in mind. The purpose of this workshop was to promote the development and application of spatial, temporal, and mainly spatiotemporal statistical methods to different fields related to the environment. The workshop is organized every 2 years to bring together practitioners and researchers of different countries all over the world. The scientific program is characterized by having special invited sessions covering topics on the latest in theory, methods, and applications, as well as contributed papers and posters. There were finally 15 invited speakers, and delegates from more than 15 different countries, 85 participants in total. The scientific committee was of a great help to organize the program selecting papers for oral and/or poster presentations. The oral presentations were mainly given by invited speakers, although there were also some space in the program for contributed papers. We also had a very interesting poster session. We would like to express our gratitude to all the members of the local organizing and scientific committee. We also would like to thank all of the participants for their contributions to the spatiotemporal field in a wide sense: geostatistics, point processes, and lattice data. The workshop achieved the objectives of the organizing committee. There were no parallel sessions and this allowed nice discussions in the sessions, all of them well attended. The interaction among participants was high, and we hope that this will promote future collaborations. The complete list of papers presented at the workshop and any particular information are posted at: http://www. uv.es/metma4. In light of the above considerations, the articles of this special issue have been carefully selected to present a variety of conceptual frameworks, powerful methods and comprehensive techniques that address a number of interesting problems in environmental, health, social and medical sciences. Mortality forecasts are nowadays widely used to create and modify retirement pension schemes, disability insurance systems and other social security programmes. During the 20th century, huge increases in life expectancy have followed medical and scientific breakthroughs. Forecasting mortality usually serves practical purposes, as improvements therein could have enormous social and financial implications. Dynamic tables analyze mortality data corresponding to a series of consecutive years. This approach allows to study the calendar effect’s influence on mortality. The representation of the evolution of mortality via dynamic models is an important and timely issue, widely extended over actuaries, statisticians or demographers. Actually, a dynamic table can be considered as a two-way J. Mateu (&) Department of Mathematics and IMAC, University Jaume I, 12071 Castellon, Spain e-mail: mateu@mat.uji.es