date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 16:38:11 +0100 from: "Jean Palutikof" subject: FW: TSUNAMI - Extreme Weather in Northern Europe to: "Tim Osborn" , "Trevor Davies" I thought you might both be interested to see this. James' final comments are interesting - more analyses and more variables for less money. Trevor - although not involved, you'll be interested to know that next Friday's meeting has been cancelled. UCL have failed to come up with anything - they're now promising for next Tuesday. James was all for meeting anyway although I tried to head him off, but fortunately Goodman has said he wants to restrict the whole thing to just one meeting at which we can table a new proposal and close the deal. I'll circulate UCL's efforts when they arrive. Jean -----Original Message----- From: James Orr [mailto:jbor@pcmail.nerc-bas.ac.uk] Sent: 15 April 1999 18:04 To: j.palutikof@uea.ac.uk Subject: Fwd: TSUNAMI - Extreme Weather in Northern Europe Jean, Futher to our discussion this afternoon, I attach my original "reviewers' comments" note to Richard Chandler. I have also spoken to Richard and he agrees that the meeting should be based on the original proposals, rather than the "under development" proposals. He will also give a presentation on Friday. Regards, James P.S. Richard mentioned that he shared your concern about the amount of work and number of meetings that the "merger" process was creating. This is just to confirm that I recognise this and am grateful for your support to date. Received: from bsfiles.nerc-bas.ac.uk (bsfiles [192.171.137.25]) by pcmail.nerc-bas.ac.uk; Thu, 15 Apr 1999 17:57:13 +0100 Received: from egon.stats.ucl.ac.uk by bsfiles.nerc-bas.ac.uk (8.8.8/NERC-1.5(Solaris 2.x, SMTP)) id RAA20497; Thu, 15 Apr 1999 17:57:13 +0100 (BST) Received: (qmail 2462 invoked from network); 15 Apr 1999 16:57:10 -0000 Received: from orpheus.stats.ucl.ac.uk (128.40.24.138) by egon.stats.ucl.ac.uk with SMTP; 15 Apr 1999 16:57:10 -0000 Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19990415180151.00744d44@egon.stats.ucl.ac.uk> X-Sender: richard@egon.stats.ucl.ac.uk X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 18:01:51 +0100 To: jbor@pcmail.nerc-bas.ac.uk From: "Caroline Connell" (by way of "Richard E. Chandler" ) Subject: TSUNAMI - Extreme Weather in Northern Europe Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Richard, I have now read the three sets of reviews that gave us feedback on the UCL and UEA proposals. The selection of remarks is mine (hence it is subjective) and I have tried to arrive at the essence of their comments. Both proposals were viewed as well-written, by competent and experienced research teams, but were seen as sitting comfortably within the bounds of their existing fields of research. UCL Proposal 1. Rejection of physical model approach is disappointing. 2. Extreme Value Methods should be included, given the subject matter of the Announcement of Opportunity (AO). 3. Would benefit from applying time-series analysis, to deal with non-linearity (reference to techniques developed by Harvey) and the dynamic (as in time-varying) nature of weather. 4. Project plan is vague on content and gives only a brief outline of the research. 5. The approach shows promise to give new insights, but needs to be more specific. 6. Did not show a great appreciation of risk. The rejection of Extreme Value Methods was seen as evidence of this. UEA Proposal 1. Competent, but not innovative. Needs to question existing paradigms (sorry their word, not mine!) about use of physical models. 2. NCEP a sensible choice of data and shows evidence of appreciating its short-comings. 3. The choice of insurance-sensitive variables is appropriate. 4. ENSO and NAO are sensible choices for input variables, but perhaps limited in their number. 5. Reliance on GCM model data implies rejection of stochastic approach, which is disappointing. 6. Would benefit greatly from a time-series approach that incorporated allowance for time-variance, non-linearity and multi-variate analysis. My overall impression of the reviewers' comments is that they see benefits in the UEA proposal being opened up to include consideration of stochastic modelling, hence UCL's involvement. Also, the range of statistical methods used should be broadened, to include time-series (multi-variate, time-varying and non-linear) and extreme value methods. Finally, the number of explanatory variables that is studied needs to be increased. I hope that this is of use to you. I would like to copy this note to Jean Palutikof, but will wait for your permission before doing so. Regards, James